Soundtrack to crime

In the rom-com, car-chase thriller Baby Driver, the starring character is Music. The entire movie is a playlist tacked with moving pictures, a tribute by writer-director Edgar Wright to rock ’n’ roll lords (Queen, Golden Earring) and soul kings (Bob & Earl, Barry White). Critics have hailed the film, rated R for language and violence, as the most entertaining movie of the summer (one even says the century).

Music makes its first appearance in Baby Driver through Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s “Bellbottoms,” a song that booms through the iPod earbuds of Baby (Ansel Elgort) as he waits in the driver’s seat of a ruby-red Subaru. Baby lip-syncs. Taps his fingers. Cocks his head. Meanwhile, his boss’s crew is pulling a major bank heist. As soon as they dash back into the car, Baby propels the volume and storms into an elegantly choreographed car chase performance—all while never losing his groove.

That’s Baby—a socially awkward young man who always keeps his earbuds on to mute the tinnitus resulting from a childhood car accident that killed his parents. Whether picking up coffee or spreading peanut butter on bread, Baby dances through life with rhythm between his ears. Music is his escape—and it’s also what keeps his conscience disengaged from the fact that he’s a hired getaway driver for some really, really nasty people. Sure, he was forced into this world because of a stupid mistake, but as one scornful baddie snarls, “One of these days, you’re going to get blood on your hands.”

Somewhere in the soundtrack, Baby Driver does have a plot. Baby does get his hands dirty, and he accidentally pulls his squeaky-clean love interest (Lily James) into the dark world with him, where no music can drown out the vortex of evil and death. But never mind the characters—the film’s true star is Music, judging from the hop and bop in the steps of moviegoers who exit the theater with an inaudible tune between their ears.