Baby Driver

Writer-director Edgar Wright puts the pedal to the metal in this propulsive, music-driven crime caper. The titular Baby (Ansel Elgort) is paying off a debt to crime boss Doc (Kevin Spacey) by working as his rubber-burning getaway driver. Doc is the ruthless, short-tempered mastermind behind a series of robberies in Atlanta. Baby's backstory involves a tragic automobile accident in which his parents were killed, leaving him with chronic tinnitus--a “hum in the drum,” according to Doc--meaning that Baby functions best when rock music is blaring from his iPod into his earbuds. Doc's trusted crew includes coked-up Buddy (Jon Hamm), his wife Darling (Eliza González), and menacing, trigger-happy Bats (Jamie Foxx). When he's not involved in high-speed car chases, Baby hangs out at the diner where his mother worked. And that's where he falls for dreamy waitress Debora (Lily James), who just wants “to head west… in a car we can't afford, with a plan we don't have.” Wright expertly synchronizes the symphony of automotive action with the energetic rhythm of what's playing on Baby's mixtape in this film named after a Simon & Garfunkel song. Recommended. (S. Granger)