Baby Driver

Advertised as the coolest action picture since Taxi, with a retro music score that strokes the nostalgic nerve while appearing new school in a classic format, this Baby looks and feels like another comic book heist. Apart from super smart stunt driving where's the wow and where the factor? Jon Hamm hamming it? Jamie Foxx playing it straight? Kevin Spacey phoning in his bad boss role?

You have to take the rough with the rough and move in permanently to Clichesville. This is not a serious film, rather a parody. Every attribute of style over content is here. Those with short attention spans don't have the luxury of a Facebook interlude because the pace is reckless and the violence extreme.

Baby (Ansel Elgort) is the young one. Tall, monosyllabic and unexpectedly adept behind the wheel he's the getaway guy for a gang of bank robbers and seldom seen without headphones pumping soul sounds into his brain. He chats up the waitress (Lily James) at the diner with words of one syllable and says he wants to quit his job without saying what it is. She goes along with him because he's different. He doesn't come on to her. He doesn't have the energy.

As for the gang, you have met them before, psycho killers with cropped hair and designer face furniture, tooled up with big guns and polished dialogue. You wouldn't want to take a long ride in a small elevator with any of them, even the babe (Eiza Gonzalez), a Mexican hottie who would rather boot you in the sweetmeats than entertain foreplay.

Writer/director Edgar Wright made those comedies with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (Shaun Of The Dead, Hot Fuzz, etc). It seems inconceivable that he is the creative force behind this. Although the plot is instantly forgettable, the action is hard core and the concept cleverly conceived as a teenager's wet dream.

If movies are the product of marketing, with bullet points and designated audiences in its sights, you could hardly find a better example than this.