Baby Driver (2015)

Okay, here we go. A favorite film of the Please Consume staff by one of our favorite filmmakers that somehow we’ve never covered before!

British filmmaker Edgar Wright is one of the most unique directors working today and fills his films with his love of music, high-energy editing, and obsession with pop culture.

Today’s movie has these traits on full display.

On its face, you may think this film is Wright doing a riff on Nicolas Winding Refn's 2011 masterpiece Drive. However, in actuality, they are both riffs on the 1978 Walter Hill thriller The Driver.

All three heist movies are about getaway drivers who don’t like talking to people or changing clothes and each film opens with an electrifying car chase to kick off the movie with a bang.

Oceans 11 director Steven Soderbergh once said: “I think [...] heists are so much like making a film.” So if heist films are really about making movies, then Baby Driver is about being an intern.

When you’re an intern, your life is about getting people coffee, waiting in the car just in case you’re needed, and getting blamed for everything bad.

And, of course, never getting praised for the good.

Your life can be a slog and at times unfulfilling, but this opening is so relatable to any person who’s had a soul-sucking internship.

It’s also all about making your own fun to get through the goddamn day.

We can’t not talk about dance on this one.

Director Edgar Wright has frequently remarked how the process of getting to production is all about choreography.

However, that’s not to take away from the editing or Oscar-nominated sound design (which we suggest paying attention to when you watch the clip).

It cannot be understated how important choreography is to stunt work. Many stunt coordinators will tell you that some of the best actors who do their own stunts are former dancers.

When making a film like this where the music is so important, the action sequences feel more like dance numbers than they do fights.

For example, watch that amazing swerve between cars and its movement choreographed by accomplished dancer Ryan Heffington. The film mixes its incredible action in such a way that it creates a new type of rhythmic action that perfectly combines the two art forms!

As you watch this clip please pay close attention to the way the characters are dressed.

Baby’s black and gray aesthetic is juxtaposed against the robber’s outfits to show the divide in the team.

Baby’s muddied, neither good-nor-bad place on the team against the hardened criminals’ black and white suits.

Guess Tomorrow’s Film