Remember that movie you saw when you were a kid, and loved it? Loved it! Best movie ever! You told all your friends about it, the great music, the cool characters, the gear cars? You talked about it for years, for decades, and then it turned up again, so you dragged your family to see a cool movie that was done right. And as you sat through it for the second time, you wondered "What happened to the movie I saw when I was a kid? This is nothing at all like it! The lines are stupid, the music is lame and the actors are gargoyles! What happened to it?"

This is that movie. It's not the movie you saw, it's the movie you remembered. It's got great music and great cars that dance, and actors who behave like Steve MacQueen, and Kevin Spacey shoots the really bad guys -- not the bank robbers, those are the heroes, but the really bad guys, and says "I was in love once." Edgar Wright -- whom I know from the movies he directed Simon Pegg in -- has directed a gangster-car-chase-teen-love movie that does what Justin Lin, Guy Ritchie and those other hot directors tried to do, but could not. Yeah. This is the movie you remembered.

Watching Baby Driver I can't help but wonder as Kevin Spacey's career is in crisis mode is Baby Driver a film he might want to have as a swan song? He chews a bit of scenery, but it's in keeping with his character and so is everyone else in the film.

If you like car chases this is your film. If you like teen idols with a bit of pout this is also your film. Ansel Elgort plays an early 20 something with two distinctions, he's hard of hearing and he drives with the speed and skill of someone in the Earnhardt clan.

Elgort is in the title role and his nickname is Baby and relative to the rest of the crews he works on robberies as a getaway driver he is a baby.. Spacey also considers him a good luck charm and there most definitely is something going on with the two of them that he can't do without him. He says himself this Reifenschneider planner character that he always gets a different crew for each job other than Elgort who is a constant.

Back when I was at the Crime Victims Board I had a case of someone being wounded in a robbery attempt of a post office looking for benefits as an innocent victim. I remember asking the assigned detective why would anyone rob a post office because that's federal jurisdiction bringing in the FBI and the post office's own police (they have their own police, note the Alan Ladd classic Appointment With Danger). He replied he couldn't figure it out unless you delve into insanity.

Kevin, that's the reason that post offices don't often get robbed not because they're neglected. The big brain of a caper would know that.

Hearing the allegations of sexual abuse coming out now about Spacey you also have to wonder about him and Elgort. Sad, but true and the producers certainly couldn't anticipate the great sexual harassment epidemic springing up when Baby Driver was cast and made. Now as we watch the movie on TV and on DVD and live streamed the viewer will wonder also.

But apart from that Baby Driver has a lot of flash and very little substance to it.

"Baby Driver" is an ultra-violent and nihilistic film...one where there really is no one to root for and which is NOT a film for the average viewer. I am warning you....think twice about this one before you decide to see it.

The story is about a very strange young man--one unlike any other in the history of film. Based on his behaviors, he seems to be somewhere on the autism spectrum. While he appears pretty normal in some ways, he is ultra-bizarre. When he's out driving getaway cars, he is VERY odd in that he MUST have head phones on and music blaring and unless he has a rhythm, he cannot drive...or so he's come to believe. How he got involved in this sort of life, the film never really explains...though it's odd seeing a boy who looks like an ad for milk hanging with a group of psychotics who commit the most brazen and horrific robberies.

And this brings me to the violence....as these folks are psychotics who don't mind killing folks. One in particular seems to LOVE killing people and with absolutely no regard for the consequences. And, the last 1/4 of the movie is pretty much nothing but fast-paced action and horrific violence.

Despite the violence (which really turned me off),the film is pretty incredible in many ways. The way the music and action and dialog all work together was amazing....and how the writer/director Edgar Wright did all this is incredible and difficult. Also, the driving stunts are among the greatest you can find on the screen. Finally, I loved that they actually used an honest to goodness deaf person to play a deaf person...and had his friend/caretaker learn very proficient sign language that is much better than you normally see in a movie (I know because my daughter is deaf and we sign in our home). It was obvious Wright really wanted to get all the details right...perhaps obsessively so. Perhaps the obsessions of Baby were inspired by Wright's own obsessiveness?

I think this is a film I'd say folks should see it once. You might not like it or you might be horrified by it....but try it unless you know that the violence will be too much...in which case, skip this one.