criminal life, but, you guessed it,
things don’t go so smoothly.
The great Australian pop cul-
ture commentator Clive James
once said he would rather watch
Steve McQueen crossing a street
than a Fred Astaire dance num-
ber. I can’t agree with him on
this specific point, but I under-
stand what he was getting at.
With so many tricks in its box,
cinema has the power to turn
mundanity into magic. The cred-
its sequence of Baby Driver sim-
ply follows Baby as he walks to
NJ STAGE 2017 - Vol. 4 No. 6
a coffee shop and back to the
warehouse where Doc’s gang
awaits, but Wright’s camera and
Elgort’s elegant movement, ac-
companied on the soundtrack
by Bob & Earl’s ‘Harlem Shuffle’,
turn it into one of the most excit-
ing sequences you’ll see all year.
Immediately we’re assured that
Baby Driver understands the mu-
sical genre in a way La La Land
didn’t. Where Damien Chazelle
shot his rhythmically challenged
stars in head to toe full shots as
though they were Astaire and
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