<Review by: Sailesh Ghelani>

Directed by Edgar Wright. Starring Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey, Lily James, Eiza Gonzalez, Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx

Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes

A free-flowing series of car chases, bank heists, double crosses and adrenalin rush music make Baby Driver a definite high for enthusiasts of the heist genre.

Everyone’s weird in this film. Each character is a ‘character’. Right from ‘Baby’ (Ansel Elgort) who has tinnitus and listens to music all the time even when he’s behind the wheel waiting for his fellow heist buddies to rob a bank. It revs his mind up to drive like a genius maniac. Is he slow? Hell no!

His boss Doc (Kevin Spacey) has something on him – which we’re never told what it is – and so Baby must stay in the business and do the jobs. Buddy (Jon Hamm) and Darling (Eiza Gonzalez) initially take Baby’s idiosyncrasies as being cute. But Bats (Jamie Foxx) is constantly suspicious of the boy’s seemingly innocent charm and proclivity to listen to music all the time. Tensions flare between care chases, blowing people’s brains out and stealing cars and iPods.

On the surface Baby Driver is your typical film where the guy who has fallen into bad company meets the girl – in this case diner waitress Deborah (Lily James) – and decides he wants to go straight on to the highway and keep driving off with her into the sunset. But his old habits won’t let him veer off the path he started with. There’s madness about Baby Driver that grips you; an uncertainty of what will follow next. Then the mayhem or violence is sudden and surreal. The music in the film fuels half of the frenetic fun.

Elgort’s baby face is perfect for the role though not as good when compared to a Ryan Gosling in the film Drive. But the ensemble is tremendously entertaining and diabolically deranged. It’s the characters that make this film.

If you’re looking for a good time, some thumping music and fun automobile action then Baby Driver is your ride.