Three criminals—Buddy , Darling , and Griff —leap from a car outside of a bank just as Baby cues up "Bellbottoms" by The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion in his 'buds. Everything from this point on moves in rhythm with the music from the slamming of the car doors after the bank robbers return to the squealing tires of one of the best car chase scenes in years. We've seen countless action scenes scored to pop or rock songs, but how many have you seen in which the action works in unison with the music?
And Wright takes this brilliant concept a step further, making even everyday normal activity feel like it's part of Baby's soundtrack. The sound of someone typing a text message on a phone or placing stacks of money on a table will work with the beat of a song, creating a film that has a rhythm, flow and structure from first frame to last that works in conjunction with its soundtrack. It's fluid and jaw-dropping—the kind of thing you want to see immediately again after it's over to catch all the things you missed. Another noteworthy aspect of the film's look is Edgar Wright's love of visual puns and the symbolic use of names. He definitely wanted to incorporate real brand names and advertising that spoke to the themes of the narrative. So during chase scenes, he absolutely wanted to see ads that spoke to a sense of speed or flight or theft or being chased.
Whether you approach this from the standpoint of clearance or product placement, it definitely creates a sensitive scenario from the point of a view of a studio's legal counsel. Long story short, we found ways to have signs and banners made that faithfully reproduced the logos of Sprint, and Target, and Boost, and a few others to place in the background during chase scenes. The selection of the pizza delivery company that Baby works for when he tries to "go straight" was another example of this. Written and directed by Edgar Wright, Baby Driver is a formulaic heist film with a very intrusive soundtrack. The story follows a driver who's indebted to a crime boss who forces him to be the wheelman for his jobs, but eventually he gets pushed too far.
Starring Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey, Lily James, Eiza González, Jon Hamm, and Jamie Foxx, the film has a good cast, however it all rest on the Baby character - who comes off as an annoying smartass. But even more annoying is the hipster soundtrack that's constantly drawing attention to itself. Still, the car chases are pretty good; though nothing that hasn't already been done in a dozen other car chase movies.
Baby Driver is just another stereotypical crime film with some Edgar Wright humor mixed in. It's also a mild, teen-friendly crime movie, about a young man whose peculiar past has locked him into a life of crime. Orphaned and injured as a child when his parents were fighting in the front seat of the car and crashed into a stopped truck, Baby grew up to have preternatural criminal skills and an obsession with cars. After stealing one that belonged to a crime boss called Doc that was loaded with loot, Doc compelled him to make restitution by serving as his on-call getaway driver.
Now, nearing the end of his obligations, he's got one more job to drive for, and he's ready to make plans for his life. First, a job; his foster father, Joe , an elderly deaf man who uses a wheelchair and with whom Baby speaks in sign language, suggests that he become a pizza-delivery driver . Also, the taciturn Baby meets Debora , a waitress at a diner where his mother also worked, and they quickly plan to leave town together.
But just when Baby thought he was out, Doc pulls him back in, and when the final job doesn't go as smoothly as the others did he comes into mortal conflict with several of his partners in crime, including Bats and Buddy . I think one of the highlights of the project for me was the movie's enormous musical component. I'm a very big popular music fan in my regular "non-professional" life...a collector of physical musical media, a concert goer, a student of rock history and an avid reader of music bios, etc.
So I feel that, rather coincidentally, I was the perfect choice to decorate this movie, being that it is essentially a pop musical wrapped in a bank robbery/car chase movie. It was not a factor in my being hired, but I think the fit worked out very well for all involved. I'm not going to say that I'm the best set decorator in Atlanta, but I do think I'm the best Set Decorator in Atlanta for a movie dealing with record collecting and analog musical equipment and recording gadgetry! Once we decorated Baby's home recording studio, it certainly didn't hurt that Shun and several members of our crew were also record collectors and former professional musicians and audio geeks. We had a lot of fun gathering and putting together all of those specific elements for Baby's audio pastiches, many of them requested by Kid Koala, who coached Ansel Elgort, who plays Baby, on how to use the analog gear on-camera. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and how about a heist movie followed by a long car chase?
That's why Edgar Wright's "baby driver" was a box office success when it was released in theaters. This is a pretty common complaint about a lot of car movies and yet it bears repeating here. The opening scene of the film has the crew pulling off a bank job with Baby as their driver. Baby then whisks them around in a high speed chase from the cops across Atlanta before getting away. However, any resident of Atlanta will point out there is simply no way the city is that deserted of traffic at any time of the day. Indeed, the cars are often shown in areas of Atlanta that are notorious for wild traffic and yet there's barely any issue getting to high speeds.
It makes the movie more exciting but it's hardly realistic to show a quiet Atlanta. A car accident in his childhood killed both his parents and left him with tinnitus, and he constantly listens to music through his earbuds as a form of catharsis. He is indebted to Atlanta-based crime boss Doc, who employs him as the driver for various heists throughout the city. Baby also cares for Joseph, his deaf foster father, and produces remixes of audio he records throughout the day. After a bank robbery with fellow heisters Griff, Darling, and Buddy, Baby is informed by Doc that he is one heist away from paying off his debt. Parents need to know that Baby Driver is an action-packed crime drama about a young getaway driver for a group of Atlanta bank robbers.
There are several mass shootings, with machine-gun deaths choreographed to music; you'll also see several car accidents with splintering glass and bloody dead bodies, sudden deaths, blood, and gore. Many of the characters eventually die sudden, terrible deaths. The main character is a reckless driver who performs over-the-top stunts; parents may want to remind teens not to try this at home. Characters kiss and make references to "getting it on" or "role playing." Female characters are in short supply, and the ones who are in the movie are sidelined, portrayed in a stereotypical way, and ogled by both the characters and the camera. There's lots of swearing, including "f--k," "ass," "goddamn," and more.
One man calls another a "retard" and a "freak"; he also calls men things like "ladies" to imply they're weak. There's some smoking and social drinking; one character has a drug addiction he feeds by stealing. One day, Baby wanders into a diner, and tumbles into love with a waitress, Debora . Amid the starry cast, the most natural performance comes from Allison King, who has a couple of short scenes as a teller in the post office. It isn't just that she seems kindly, and genuinely vexed when danger looms; it's also that, alone in a landscape of posturing, she makes no effort to be cool. As in a musical, the songs of "Baby Driver" come first—it's the digital version of a jukebox movie.
The actor's musicality helped him land "Baby Driver," an ambitious passion project from "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz" filmmaker Wright that's filled with syncopated action scenes and car chases galore. Around Elgort, Wright lined up heavyweights such as Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx and Kevin Spacey in a story so punctuated by music, cast members received scripts with a custom playlist to listen to as they read. All of the action sequences and choreographed scenes were set to and named after very particular songs, and Edgar was adamant that we have all of the physical records that originally contained these songs on hand at all times during the shoot. It became clear to me from the start that he intended to be able to show all of the songs for the films soundtrack within the sets themselves.
So I systematically gathered all of the records on his master list of "must-haves" very early in the prep period. And I say this as a fellow music geek, Edgar's tastes are very eclectic and he came up with a few artists/songs that were completely alien even to me, and there were a few others that proved quite difficult to find vinyl copies of. All of the music that plays in the Diner, for instance, had to be available in 45 rpm single format to shoot close-ups of the various songs dropping and playing on the jukebox as needed. Likewise, we had fun placing various album covers around Joe's Apartment set.
Not all of this made it into the final cut of course, but there are lots of little bits and pieces of this stuff throughout, if you know where to look. It helps greatly that few people know how to assemble a cast like Edgar Wright. Elgort and James are engaging, charismatic leads with fantastic chemistry. Unlike most Hollywood action movies, the survival of the heroes here becomes something we actively root for instead of just know is likely to happen. The "villains" of the piece are perfectly cast and directed as well, particularly Spacey and Jamie Foxx as the menacing Bats.
Both roles are written and cast in a way that they could have stolen focus with performances that play to the cheap seats but neither actor ever does. Foxx is particularly phenomenal in a role that's both funny and filled with simmering danger. It's one of those films where every single role, from the burly diner chef to the sweet post office employee, feels like it was cast with exactly the right person. It creates a sense of additional magic in a film when you can sense that every single element, even the most minor ones, is working exactly as its creator intended. The movie is notable for its glorious soundtrack mixed with top-level car action. Wright shot everything practically, meaning those are real cars doing the incredible stunts.
However, that doesn't excuse the fact that there are a lot of things wrong with this movie. Like so many car chase films, it makes mistakes on how cars can behave. From the moment Edgar Wright's heist movie-meets-extended-car-chase "Baby Driver" accelerated onto screens in 2017, fans have been clamoring for a sequel.
Baby Driver follows talented, young getaway driver Baby , who suffers from a condition that leaves a constant ringing in his ears so he relies on the beat of his personal soundtrack to drown out the noise so he can do what he does best. When he meets the girl of his dreams, Deborah , Baby sees a chance to ditch his criminal life and make a clean getaway. But after being coerced into working for a crime boss, Doc , he must face the music when a doomed heist threatens his life, love and freedom. The last paragraph probably makes "Baby Driver" sound like a music video, and has likely pushed out potential viewers looking for more substance than style. There's enough story and action here to satisfy without the music that drives the filmmaking.
Much of the joy of this film is watching it unfold so I'll be brief with plot. Baby had a brief dalliance with crime, and he made the mistake of robbing from Doc, who now forces him to drive as penance. He has one more job for Doc and then he'll be back to his normal life. Of course, we all know how that typically turns out in crime movies.
And when Baby meets a lovely waitress named Debora , he finds a reason to go straight. At least, that's the name he gives people when asked, although he's more often ignored. He's the nearly silent getaway driver for a robbery syndicate managed by Doc , who organizes the crime, hires three criminals, and then puts them in Baby's car. After a car accident as a kid left him with tinnitus, he spends the vast majority of his waking hours with ear buds in his ears to drown out the ringing. And the world around him moves to the music on one of his many iPods—he has various ones for different moods.
Sometimes the world seems to respond to his choice, sometimes his choice seems to influence the world around him—either way, music is as essential to the success of "Baby Driver" as it was to "La La Land," maybe more. Baby Driver was a longtime passion project Wright had been developing since 1995, when the writer-director was a struggling 21-year-old filmmaker living in suburban London. He had relocated to London to finish his first professional film, the low-budget western comedy A Fistful of Fingers, and to contemplate his future in entertainment. Wright's repeated listening to Orange , the fourth studio album by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, provided the impetus for Baby Driver.
At first he envisioned a high-speed car chase, which then evolved into a full sequence where the getaway driver dances to "Bellbottoms" in his car before the ensuing chase. Though this was ultimately written into the script as the film's opening sequence, Wright's nascent vision was far from a fully realized project. By the time Baby Driver took definite form, the advent of the iPod, Wright's childhood tinnitus, and his reading of Oliver Sacks' Musicophilia , which explores the neuroscience of music, were forces shaping the project's artistic direction. For those who aren't familiar with the movie, it follows Baby , a skilled getaway driver who's also losing his hearing.
He's always listening to music to drown out the humming in his ears, and when he decides to get away from his life of crime, he must contend with the crew of angry criminals he once worked with. The film also stars Kevin Spacey, Lily James, Jon Bernthal, Eiza González, Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx, and Flea. What makes Baby Driver a movie musical, rather than an action movie with a killer soundtrack, is how Wright incorporates the film's music into not just the narrative but the action as well. Every action scene functions as a choreographed dance number, with gunshots and screeching wheels marking perfect time with the music, and Elgort turns in some winning lip-sync-and-dance moments that help establish Baby's character beyond his signature quirk.
But Baby Driver also follows many of the beats of the classic Hollywood musical — a form that Wright knows and loves — particularly in the courtship between Baby and Debora, which cannily uses music to narrative, thematic, and emotional ends. Talented getaway driver Baby relies on the beat of his personal soundtrack to be the best in the game. After meeting the woman of his dreams, he sees a chance to ditch his shady lifestyle and make a clean break. Coerced into working for a crime boss , Baby must face the music as a doomed heist threatens his life, love and freedom. The lack of CGI for the movie allows several errors with cars to be more noticeable.
The issues include how a car marred in one scene can look perfectly new in the next. For the most part, massive issues with stunt work and dummies are avoided. Yet the opening car chase scene does have a very notable error that can be seen on freeze-frame. When the car is shown driving from above, look closely and it's obvious that it's only one driver inside, rather than three passengers, as well.
It's not as obvious as a lot of other mistakes yet it does mar the film a bit to know how fake this car chase was. By 2007, after signing a multi-picture deal with Working Title, and with a clearer vision of the project, Wright met with Steven Price to discuss early musical ideas for Baby Driver. Work resumed immediately after Wright's departure from Ant-Man, when the studio began assembling their roster of actors and technical staff before shooting. In preparation, Wright spent time with ex-career criminals in Los Angeles and London to develop an accurate depiction of a real-life bank robber's work.
The reason why genre pieces in the Cornetto trilogy worked was because you actually cared about what happens to the characters. There's a definite storyline of characters feeling stuck in their life, and the events in the movies act as catalysts that drive them to change as human beings. If those films were just derivatives of the zombie film, police procedural or alien invasion genres, I don't think we'd still be talking about them today. The climactic garage chase scene is packed with some thrills but is also rather confusing. First, the movie presents how Buddy wants payback on Baby for ruining the job and costing him Darling. But it's still amazing how revenge overwhelms Buddy's reason to hunt Baby down rather than save himself.
How Tall Is Baby Driver The garage really isn't big enough to hide the cars roaring out. Also, Buddy just driving a cop car with no problem is an issue as the police would have been alerted to a car being stolen and it would actually make it easier to hunt Buddy down. That's not to mention the lack of car alarms going off despite all these near crashes and brushes. Baby is listening to "Brighton Rock" by Queen on his iPod, which foreshadows events that later occur in the movie.
The song is a reference to the story Brighton Rock by Graham Greene, in which character Pinkie is a teenager in a gang. Throughout the story, Pinkie is trying to cover his tracks of all of the murders and secrets that he's wrapped up in. He falls in love with a girl named Rose who is a waitress at a diner. At the end of the novel, all of the crime has finally caught up to Pinkie and, after being chased by the police, he dies.
Written and directed by Edgar Wright , BABY DRIVER stars Ansel Elgortas Baby, an emotionally damaged young man whose youthful mistakes landed him in debt to mysterious crime boss Doc . Now Baby is a getaway driver for Doc, and he's so good at what he does that he seems unstoppable -- and stylish, since he always selects the perfect song for each caper. Just one more job will get him out of hock; then he can get a real job and live in peace with his foster father, Joseph . Maybe he can even go out on a date with Debora , the cute waitress at his favorite diner.
