BABY DRIVER

Tons of style, slick car chases, and massive amounts of music are the foundation for Baby Driver, the latest summer action movie.  There's not a lot of substance here, but what is here is pretty slick.

Baby (Ansel Elgort) is the main getaway driver for robbery crews put together by Doc (Kevin Spacey).  Baby stays mostly silent, constantly listening to music on a variety of iPods to drown out the ringing in his ears.  Doc puts together crews of three robbers, they do the job, and Baby drives them away.  Baby is working off a debt to Doc, which happens after the opening job of the movie.

Baby is happy to get away from crime -- working at pizza delivery, romancing waitress Debora (Lily James) at a diner, taking care of his deaf foster father -- and things seem to be going fine.  But them Doc brings Baby back into the world of crime, with the promise of money and not-so-thinly-veiled threats against his loved ones.  Worse, the crew for the latest robbery is Bats (Jamie Foxx), a self-proclaimed crazy man and killer; and Buddy (Jon Hamm) and Darling (Eiza Gonzalez), who may be as nuts and dangerous as Buddy.

Baby Driver is pretty much all style. from the elaborate car chase sequences to the soundtrack provided by Baby's soundtracks.  (An early scene has words from the song popping up as Baby dances down the street.)  Ansel is good as a decent guy stuck doing bad things for bad people, and the rest of the cast is solid as well.  Baby Driver is solid summer fare.

Overall grade: B
Reviewed by James Lynch