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Baby Driver

  • Film
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
Baby Driver
Baby Driver
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Time Out says

4 out of 5 stars

A music-obsessed young getaway driver falls for a waitress in this frenetic and hugely entertaining action flick from 'Shaun of the Dead' director Edgar Wright

Music sounds better when you’re on the road. In ‘Baby Driver’, ‘Shaun of the Dead’ director Edgar Wright takes the car-chase action film – loaded with tyre squeals – and weds it to a cracking jukebox playlist. The result is the most supercharged piece of motorised choreography since John Landis destroyed a fleet of cop cars in ‘The Blues Brothers’.

Wright’s hero, Baby (‘The Fault in Our Stars’ actor Ansel Elgort), still has a hint of peach fuzz on his cheeks, but he’s a genius with a gearstick. A getaway driver with dreams of going straight, Baby needs music to drown out the tinnitus-induced buzz in his head. Unlike the more violent and existential vehicular visions seen in ‘Drive’ or ‘Bullitt’, ‘Baby Driver’ is sweet fantasy.

That means its two-bit thieves and criminal masterminds (Jamie Foxx, Jon Hamm, Kevin Spacey) are enjoyably cartoonish; the same goes for Baby’s waitress crush, Debora (Lily James), the kind of broad-smiling cutie that filmmakers always seem to dream about. Their romance is nourished with doe-eyed looks and Beach Boys-scored dreaminess, but the movie doesn’t know what to do with it, except hatch a plan to ‘head west and never stop’.

The chances are you won’t mind: the action sequences here, imbued with humour and break-on-a-dime timing, are the most beautifully sustained and jaw-dropping of Wright’s career. You’ll be rewinding them in your head for days.

Joshua Rothkopf
Written by
Joshua Rothkopf

Release Details

  • Rated:15
  • Release date:Wednesday 28 June 2017
  • Duration:113 mins

Cast and crew

  • Director:Edgar Wright
  • Cast:
    • Lily James
    • Kevin Spacey
    • Jon Bernthal
    • Ansel Elgort
    • Jamie Foxx
    • Eiza González
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