Edgar Wright’s latest film, “Baby Driver” hits theaters this weekend, and it doesn’t disappoint! While I may have come into the theater with a biased love of this director’s work, I believe it may be his most broadly accessible feature yet. The film still offers loads of winks and nods to those eagle eyed viewers with a heart of celluloid to catch and nod knowingly while still engaging in expertly crafted thrills set to a heart thumping soundtrack.

The film is set in Atlanta this time, a departure from Wright’s usual English countryside comedies, and begins with one of the most entertaining opening scenes in recent memory. We’re introduced to Baby (Ansel Elgort), the quiet yet calculated driver to a rotating crew of bank robbers and general degenerates, as he waits for a job to be completed while he taps and thumps and hums along to his personal soundtrack that’s set to the rhythm of the robbery. You may wonder during these few small moments as Baby joyfully thumps along to the music “Is this kid’s shtick going to become grating?” Hold. As soon as Buddy (Jon Hamm), Darling (Eiza Gonzalez), and Griff (Jon Bernthal) trot back across the street and hop into Baby’s red Subaru, you’ll know whether you’re into this movie or not. The opening heist alone is a thing of beauty as Baby shows what he’s made of behind the wheel.

Baby is constantly listening to music, earbuds always in, even as the details of an upcoming heist are at hand. As Kevin Spacey’s Doc explains near the beginning, Baby was in a crash when he was young resulting in tinnitus, so he plays music all the time to drown out the ringing. Bats, an unpredictable criminal played chaotically by Jamie Foxx, doesn’t buy it. He calls the quiet kid out, but Baby effectively proves his observative nature and fine tuned attentive skills. Jon Hamm turns in a great performance as Buddy, he chews the scenery with a sort of grimy dignity and was a surprising delight among the cast. Lily James stars as Baby’s love interest Debora, a diner waitress sporting a familiar look if you’ve ever seen the first two seasons of Twin Peaks. While Debora is almost more of an idea than a fully fledged person, the characters do have a bit of that going on, but James and Elgort sell the romance well enough to do the film justice. The film’s downtime between heists focuses on the quiet nature of the lead and delves a bit into his background to give levity to the people Baby cares about in his own life.

Wright is chiefly invested in the music and sound editing of this film. Even when things turn sour and bullets begin to fly, the blast of bullets is set to the beat of the song at hand. Playfully edited to the beat, Wright’s precision here is music to the eye’s ears. The quick cuts and snappy cinematography that have permeated the director’s previous efforts are littered throughout this film. This film is genre at it’s finest. Curiously inventive and turning expectation on its head, this film is about style, music, and some killer getaway sequences. It’s been the most fun I’ve had at the theater so far this summer and I cannot tell people enough: Go see this movie! If you want more originality, more new ideas and stories in film, then please support original films when they’re showing, lest we become entrenched with the same old thing until the end of time.

Final Score: Three red cars & four cups of coffee