By Fraser Nunn (@badknitbear)
Have you seen Baby Driver yet?
If not, go see it. If you have, go see it again. I don’t want to do that review thing where you say how good a film is and it kinda swells the anticipation and your heart beats faster at the thought of going to see the film and then you get in there and you have such a massive idea of what the films going to be that you’re left with the cinematic equivalent to blue balls.
What I do want to do is just express to you all how damn exciting it was to see this film in the cinema. For years my top five films have been secured by 80’s Classics and 90’s brilliance but that has been well and truly invaded by Edgar Wright’s instant Classic Baby Driver. The film is essentially about this young guy called Baby. Yes, B-a-b-y, Baby. He gets in bed (not literally) with Kevin Spacey’s character Doc and winds up as his go to Getaway driver. From then on, the film follows this quiet kid around his life as a getaway driver and his home life as he tried to break free from his mundane job… as a getaway driver for a major crime boss.
Past the basic stuff now, the film has one of the best opening scenes of any film ever (I may have said the same thing about Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2 but trust me this time). It’s amazing, taking a massive amount of influence from Edgar Wright’s 2003 Music Video for Mint Royale (this video was the birth of the script for Baby Driver) with the crew heading into the bank to start the heist and Baby showing the world how to rock a lipsync in the car and not look obnoxious AF. Bellbottoms blasting, we are left out of the action, focussed on Baby and what he’s seeing and it’s honestly just perfect – every beat is so well timed I had actual shivers.
This theme continues throughout the film: the music was Wright’s primary asset in Baby Driver, and there are countless scenes in which the music matches the scene perfectly but it’s so much more than a backing up tune. We’re hearing what the characters hear and we’re experiencing everything along side Baby. We hear his emotions played out in song form, we hear his joy, his anger, his fear and frustration and we hear his confidence. Baby is well written and complex and the music tells us this story.
The Harlem Shuffle walk, in which Baby is picking up coffee post heist, shows just how much Wright can do with really basic scenes, keep an eye on the grafitti in the background of this scene and admire the timing and the choreography, it’s truly stunning and it’s not the only one. The film is full of beautiful cars, and beautiful driving sequences and chase scenes, yet one of the best chase scenes comes when Baby is on the run on foot practically dancing as he goes, easily becoming one of the film’s strongest scenes.
It’s no surprise that after all this rambling that I’ll say this – Baby Driver is one of the best films I’ve seen in quite some time. Its sublime editing, writing and direction, all thanks to Mr Edgar Wright, helps to solidify itself as one of the year’s finest flicks and makes it another strong addition to the British marvel’s filmography. Only time will tell if it can really take the title of “best film yet” but with a phenomenal soundtrack, Wright’s trademark aesthetic and the aforementioned writing, you’re doing yourself a disservice by not seeing this film – let Edgar Wright and Baby take you on a wild ride.
TRANSISTOR 