Baby Driver’s been a passenger in the Edgar Wright career vehicle for over twenty years. Having conceived the concept – that of a getaway driver with a unique relationship to music – in the nineties, it was in directing the music video for Mint Royal’s ‘Blue Song’ that Wright first had a play. There Noel Fielding played the eponymous driver in an electrically entertaining four minute venture of boogieing to put shower singers to shame. Wright could quite easily have parked the idea there and then. What a sign, then, of his sheer brilliance and audacity as a director that he held on and has now produced something even more spectacular. Baby Driver is breathtaking. A film that will be treasured for generations to come.
There’s a moment in Karl Freund’s original 1932 The Mummy – a then original feature designed to replicate the themes and successes of Universal’s contemporary horror films: Dracula, Frankenstein etc. – in which the Mummy himself (Boris Karloff playing Imhotep) is awoken from his sarcophagus slumber behind an unaware Ralph Norton (Bramwell Fletcher). It’s a scene that’s not quite as effective as it might have been but one that works by virtue of the brilliant tension of expectation that comes with viewers knowing exactly what is coming.
So, there you have it! A generally positive half term report, with plenty of opportunities for improvement in the rest of the year. If Baby Driver, The Big Sick and Dunkirk are anything to go by in the first month of the second half, we’re in for a treat.
The Film Blog 