Baby Driver · reception & legacy

2017 · Edgar Wright

How Baby Driver has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

A critical and box-office darling in summer 2017 — the rare original studio hit — its afterlife got complicated fast: the Kevin Spacey scandal broke months after release, and later allegations against Ansel Elgort left fans renegotiating their relationship with it.

What's debated

The perennial fight is whether it's Edgar Wright's most purely cinematic achievement or his shallowest — dazzling sync-to-the-beat style wrapped around his thinnest story — now tangled up with the awkwardness of its two most prominent stars.

Its footprint

The opening 'Bellbottoms' getaway and the one-take 'Harlem Shuffle' coffee run (with lyrics graffitied into the street) became instantly referenced set pieces — shorthand for cutting-action-to-music, endlessly imitated in ads, edits, and video essays.

Where it stands

A Letterboxd-era favourite and gateway Edgar Wright film — the 'watch the first six minutes and you're in' recommendation — even as some cinephiles rank it below the Cornetto trilogy.

★ Did you know? Wright road-tested the concept 14 years early: his 2003 music video for Mint Royale's 'Blue Song' (starring Noel Fielding) is essentially the opening getaway scene in miniature, a bank-job driver rocking out in the car — he'd been sitting on the idea since the mid-90s.

Named by the director

Influences Edgar Wright has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.

The Driver (1978) — Wright repeatedly cited Walter Hill's stripped-down getaway-driver picture as the film's key ancestor.
Heat (1995) — Wright pointed to Mann's heist realism as a model for grounding the robbery scenes.
Walter Hill — Wright acknowledged the debt so openly he gave Hill a cameo in the film.