Watch The First Six Minutes of ‘Baby Driver’

The weekend is here again. If you’re planning to catch a movie, why not consider the heist flick Baby Driver?

This critically acclaimed thriller stars The Fault in Our Stars’ Ansel Elgort as a baby-faced, tinnitus-suffering getaway driver who works for a shrewd crime boss (Kevin Spacey). When Baby falls head over heels in love with a waitress (Downton Abbey’s Lily James), he think it’s high time to hang up his spurs. But before he does that, he has to figure out his own getaway, by doing one last job…

I know what you’re thinking? Another movie involving car chases? But Baby Driver is no Fast & Furious 8 or, er, Overdrive. For starters, it’s a musical heist flick. No, no, it isn’t a traditional musical where folks break out into a song to express their feelings.

It’s more like a post-modern musical where the action is synchronised to the tunes Baby is listening in his iPod to help drown out the ringing in his ears. In the movie, the moves are choreographed by Ryan Heffington, whose works include Sia's ' Chandellier' and Arcade Fire's ' We Exist'.

Director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) got the idea in 1995. In an interview with Empire, he said, “I was 21 when I got hooked on Orange, the album by The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. There was one track, ‘Bellbottoms’, that I listened to a lot, and whenever I did I’d think, ‘This is the perfect car-chase music.’ That got me thinking about making a musical action film. Something that takes what Scorsese or Tarantino do with a jukebox soundtrack to its absolute limit.”

A few years later, Wright tested out his idea in the 2002 music video for Mint Royale’s ‘Blue Song’. In the video, a getaway driver is grooving to the tune while his law-breaking pals (including Shaun of the Dead’s Nick Frost) are pulling off a 211 (that’s ‘robbery’ in police-speak).

The video will later inspire the opening heist/chase in Baby Driver (where he got to finally use 'Bellbottoms' as well). You can now check out that sequence here (courtesy of Sony Pictures). Just remember: Don’t try the stunts at home.

Baby Driver (NC16) is now in cinemas.