Baby Driver is the new action comedy film which is written and directed Edgar Wright. It stars Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacy, Lily James, Jon Bernthal, Eiza Gonzalez, Jon Hamm, and Jamie Foxx. This has been one of the best reviewed movies of the year along with Get Out so let’s see if it lives up to the hype.

Baby Driver is the story of “Baby” (Elgort) who is a getaway driver for robberies. Part of his crew includes Buddy (Hamm), Griff (Bernthal), Darling (Gonzalez), and Bats (Foxx) who work for Doc (Spacy). After meeting Debora (James), Baby tries to get out of his life of crime to be with her. As I said earlier, this movie has major hype as it currently sits at a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and I do have to say, it lives up to the hype. I loved this movie a lot. There are many things to like about this and we’ll get into those soon, but I have to start off with the music. I have never seen a movie that is tailored to the music compared to the music normally being tailored to the movie. What I mean by that is a lot of scenes in the movie move specifically to match up with the beat of the song and it makes for some stylish moments. Honestly it’s the best I’ve ever seen a movie use music ever, which includes Guardians of the Galaxy.

As for the actors, everyone was stellar. Ansel Elgort as Baby was a very likable guy and someone who was easy to get behind. He’s a good person with in an incredible skill who’s stuck in a bad situation. Elgort and Lily James had incredible chemistry and you really bought into their relationship. It was a little fast but they were a really cute couple. Kevin Spacy (one of the best actors working today) and Jamie Foxx were also great as you could tell they had a lot of fun filming this movie. Other positives include that the movie was very unpredictable in the second half and car chases are fantastic. They felt real, which made those chases that much more dramatic.

As for negatives, I really have just nitpicks. I thought the ending of the movie is a bit choppy, Baby’s and Debora’s romance is a bit rushed, and it is worth noting that Jon Bernthal is in the movie for 5 minutes total. So that’s more false advertising than a flaw, but Bernthal is one of my favorite actors and I wish he was in the movie longer. But other than that, Baby Driver is a true winner. Edgar Wright made a great film here and hopefully that leads to more work for him. I hope this movie makes a lot of money because we NEED more original ideas.

Rating: A/94%

Written By: Steven Santoro (SVS_1993)