Baby Driver

Three years ago, director Edgar Wright walked out on Ant-Man. The film, nearly ten years in production, was a true labour of love. Wright had undertaken the project because he adored the comic and its creator Stan Lee. Writing alongside Joe Cornish, Wright was finally at a stage where filming could commence. On looking at the script, however, Marvel began to balk. It’s worth remembering a few years earlier Wright’s Scott Pilgrim Vs The World failed to recoup its budget. Fearful that they too would count the cost of the director’s playfulness, production stalled; without discussion, the company proffered the script out to other screenwriters, requesting a second opinion. This understandably enraged Wright. All the other movies he had made had him as writer-director, auteur, custodian; now, he found himself sidelined and, in his mind, maligned.

The one that got away.

So what do you do when you’ve given a huge chunk of your life to something that bears no fruit? Figuratively, Wright got into his car, wound down the window, put on some loud tunes and drove; drove until he could no longer see Marvel in his rear-view mirror. Unwilling to play passenger to corporatism, Wright took hold of the steering wheel and sought, yet again, to blaze his own trail. The film he turned to was Baby Driver, an idea that had been in his head since the age of twenty-one. Then, he was living in London, a fledgling director without the means to turn his visions into reality. He remembered hearing the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion track ‘Bellbottoms’ and visualising a heist movie. Twenty years later, his imaginings have been made manifest, forming as they do the opening sequence of the film.

Baby Driver begins with Baby, a handsome young driver listening to ‘Bellbottoms.’ Enthral to the music, confined to the car, he covers the track, playing percussion with the wheel, synchronising the guitar parts to windscreen wipers.  Attached to his headphones owing to tinnitus, he is clearly in love with music. Soon after a gang of bank thieves join him. It soon becomes clear why Baby is the ‘stickman’ of the group: he may not be the front and centre hype man, bawling, ‘Put your hands up motherfuckers,’ but his behind the scenes work on foot pedals form the backbeat for their escape. Baby, you see, uses music in the same way a seeker uses mantras: by dissolving into the cadence he achieves a kind-of transcendence, becoming at one with the wheel, finding nirvana on the road, achieving deification when he brings the criminals home.

The opening scene is followed by a homage to Saturday Night Fever with our hero doing a celebratory dance to Bob & Earl’s ‘Harlem Shuffle.’ As Baby walks back with coffees for the group, he sidesteps, twists and shuffles to the tune. Quite imaginatively, song lyrics are transposed onto the screen in the form of shop fronts, posters and street art. A music shop with a hanging sax allows our hero to lean in and play along. It’s one big audacious set-piece that demonstrates Wright’s brio and ambition.

Early on in the film we learn that Baby is driving under duress. On being paid for the job, Doc (Kevin Spacey) only gives him a small piece of the pie. It isn’t until later in the movie we find out why Baby is happy to settle for less. Even though, Baby works for criminals, he doesn’t hang with them. He is a devoted son to his deaf foster father, fixing him meals and mirth. The two may be on opposite ends of the hearing chart, but when it comes to one another they’re in perfect pitch. Otherwise, Baby is something of loner, spending his free time locked away in his bedroom, sampling real-life conversations into music. That is until he meets Debora (Lily James), a waitress in a diner, who so happens to be humming along to Carla Thomas’ ‘B-A-B-Y.’ Immediately Baby is smitten. The waitress has taken his order and given him her heart. The two swap names, agreeing that when it comes to song titles one outscores the other. From there, Baby follows Debora to the launderette, where under the whirr of washing the two do the most intimate thing a couple can do: share headphones.

Come be my waitress tonight. Serve me the sky with a big slice of lemon.

Along with the romance and the car chases, there is humour to be had. For many years Edgar Wright worked in collaboration with Simon Pegg, creating the award-winning sitcom Spaced and the ‘Cornetto Trilogy’ Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and World’s End. It’s true that this film doesn’t chase laughs in the way those did, but it easily passes Mark Kermode’s ‘six laughs test’ with a hilarious hat joke and fancy dress mix up being just two standout moments. Even though there are laughs, it’s undeniable that there aren’t as many as in his previous offerings – this is no bad thing. In his earlier works, Wright stuck to his tried and tested formula of supplanting big-budget American genre onto suburban English settings; here, the action leads the movie, letting the laughs arrive organically.

It’s clear that I really love this movie, but I would be lying if I said I loved it all. I felt that the end was a mess. Whilst the rest of the movie displays excellent clutch control, moving seamlessly through the gears of action, romance and comedy; the end felt like it was all gas – someone really could have done with putting the brakes on. There’s something to be admired about shooting a running scene like a car chase, and a car chase like a fight scene, but it felt like it had been done at the expense of the plot.

For all my reservations about the denouement, I’ve come to the conclusion that Baby Driver is one hell of a ride. After the disappointment of Ant-Man, Wright has re-written history, creating his own box-office marvel. Just like The Great American Songbook, he has found redemption on the open road. You can too, but only if you see this picture. 

It would be a sin to miss it.