By Megan Bianco
Baby Driver premiered with acclaim, hype and deserved success. People have been praising it for being original. While this is technically true, all this praise inspired me to take some time and dig into some of the influences and inspirations filmmaker Edgar Wright used throughout the film process.
The new action-comedy is a stylized, colorful romp of car chases and pop culture references, and manages to never miss a beat. Despite the lighthearted tone, a lot of viewers instantly saw comparisons to Nicolas Winding Refn’s action-thriller Drive from 2011. Both films are led by protagonists—played by Ryan Gosling and Ansel Elgort—who are aloof loners, yet charismatic and good with a car. The love interests in both movies are cute, blonde diner waitresses (Carey Mulligan and Lily James, both also British in real life), and a femme fatale character is featured on the driver’s crime team (Christina Hendricks and Eiza Gonzalez).
But the amusing thing is that Refn’s action flick was in turn heavily inspired by another crime feature with a car: The Driver (1978) by Walter Hill. That film stars Ryan O’Neal as a high-in-demand getaway driver who is being chased by an obsessed detective (Bruce Dern) with Isabelle Adjani as the female lead who aides O’Neal in dodging Dern. Interestingly enough, upon release The Driver got a polarizing mixed reception from critics and only did moderately well at the box-office. But nonetheless, the film still managed to find a following over the years with movie fans and obviously with directors like Refn and Wright. What influenced Hill’s own feature, can be assumed to be Steve McQueen hits like Bullitt (1968) and The Getaway (1972) with their own influential car chases and action sequences. Both were early films for Hill himself as an assistant director and scriptwriter as well.
Another inspiration for Hill, Refn and Wright could be Jean-Pierre Melville’s French crime drama Le Samouraï (1967), with Alain Delon as a nameless hitman who is flawless at his line of work. “He has no family, no history and seemingly few emotions. Whatever happened to him drove any personality deep beneath the surface. He is an existential hero, I suppose, defined entirely by his behavior,” Roger Ebert stated in his review of Drive about the leads in films like Le Samouraï and Drive. Wright ultimately gives his main character in Baby Driver a roommate and an additional backstory, but essentially he is a blank slate to the rest of the characters.
Although a character study rather than an action-thriller, a lot of film viewers also want to make the comparisons of The Driver, Drive and Baby Driver to Martin Scorsese’s classic Taxi Driver (1976). A reclusive, loner Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) is also always behind the wheel and involved with shady people and a beautiful blonde (Cybill Shepherd), much like the drivers in Baby Driver and Drive. So while the average viewer can appreciate the fact that Baby Driver isn’t a sequel, remake or film adaptation of an existing movie, most of us film fans also appreciate when strong influences can carry through, but don’t feel like a knock-off.
Megan Bianco is a Southern California-based movie reviewer and content writer with a degree from California State University Northridge.
