The guitars of The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion's Bellbottoms strike, our protagonist Baby moves in time, the engine revs, and we hurtle into a frenetic, meticulously choreographed car chase that - just like Baby - pulsates with the intoxicating beat of the music. During this first sequence amidst the wail of the engine and the music you realise that Edgar Wright is going for something audacious: this isn't just a film with music that fits, it's a film precisely designed to groove with every subtle movement of the carefully selected tracks.
From here, Edgar Wright continues at breakneck speed, telling the tale of Baby - played by Ansel Elgort with a magnetism that was for me reminiscent of a young Harrison Ford - a charming introvert being forced to work as a getaway driver because of a debt to Kevin Spacey's crime boss Doc. We soon learn that as a result of a car crash when he was younger he listens to music to drown out the ringing in his ears, a contrivance that lies at the heart of the film.
Although the central conceit of the music is an affectation that risks grating, the blurring of the line between soundtrack and what Baby is listening to is pulled off with such playful imagination by Wright that it's hard not go with. With a sort of post-modern acknowledgement of the ridiculousness of it all, he pushes the conceit to its absolute limit. Since what Baby is listening to dictates the soundtrack, it goes both ways: Wright crafts the action so it works with the music, but there are also moments when Baby conducts action in the film to make sure it works. It functions as a kind of fourth wall break: a cheeky nod to camera, stuffed with the kind of mischievous self awareness that he has always been so good at.
As is usually the case with Edgar Wright, this has the feeling of a film made by a film fan, proudly stuffed with a mish mash of influences: there's something of Pulp Fiction in the dexterity of the script; the car chases are made with the crunching immediacy yet lack of cuts suggestive of a man who has seen The French Connection; and the Baby character owes something to the lean simplicity of The Driver (directed by Walter Hill who has a voice cameo).
Above all though, Baby Driver is constructed specifically to entertain, exhiliratingly efficient in the implementation of its toe-tappingly enjoyable car based thrills, it is infectious, grin inducing stuff. Like all of Edgar Wright's genre bending efforts so far, it's very hard to sum up - my best effort would be a sort of heist car chase, action-musical whatever that is. Regardless, it's probably some of the most straight up fun I've had with a film this year.
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