'Don't spoil the movie by adding your own soundtrack' urges the public service announcement before the start of the movie reminding the patrons to turn thier phones off and refrain from talking loudly as to not disturb the neighbors. Well, what if? What if there indeed is a soundtrack to every proceeding in real life, when the scratch needle gently positions itself on the platter and start playing the appropriate song at the most opportune moment? and better, if the songs play directly into one's own ear or one's own head with least disturbance to everyone around? Wouldn't life to a lot fun that way? When 'Guardians of galaxy', the first installment, strutted into the theaters and endeared itself to the audience the world over a few years ago, a sizeable part of its charm and success was accorded to its stellar (80s pop) soundtrack, underlining the importance of (fun, foot-tapping) background verbal accompaniment to ably complement the proceedings on the screen. 'Baby Driver' takes the idea of retro soundtrack a bit further and makes it an equal part (accomplice) to the unfolding explosiveness as much as the daredevil driving antics of the eponymous hero. Though the technique of making the soundtrack a part of the narrative is not entirely unique, as 'High Fidelity' had already done this with vinyl records and romantic ballads about a decade ago, the idea of marrying two entirely different genres, musical and thriller, is wickedly entertaining. With the actors themselves adding their own strange rhythms to their speech patterns, (Kevin Spacey channeling Christopher Walken, the master of staccato, and Jamie Foxx transforming into sinister gangsta (and the rap practically writes itself), acknowledging the strange space they are in, 'Baby Driver' rises above the run of the mill chase fare with good and evil split right in the middle, and becomes a thrilling musical (not the other way around) apt to be adapted to Broadway once it finishes off its theatrical run. Now that should be a first of its kind, a thriller on Broadway!

On the other end of the spectrum is Nicolas Refn's 'Drive', a bare-bones, bare-knuckled story about a reticent getaway driver, who chooses his moments to open his mouth, while standing there as a mute for the rest of the time.... when he is not driving like a maniac, that is. This is Michael Mann's territory where career criminals speak only when spoken to, emotions and relations come second to their task at hand, and when the action explodes, it is loud, chaotic and manic. Compare it to the 'Baby Driver', whose hands are also dipped in the same murky world of 'jobs' (hiests, robberies and getaways), but has the warmth and tenderness of a Saturday morning cartoon, a delightful mix of the heart beat and musical beat, and a hilarious synergy of violence and symphony (another movie that concocted this potent potion of using classical scores to pure mayhem is Stanley Kubrick's 'A Clockwork Orange', which is designed to evoke tragic terror; and of course, every Tarantino movie, which is more opera than jazz). While Mann's or Refn's crimes and shootouts play out against defeaning death rattle of hard metal and whizzing bullets, the stunts of 'Baby Driver' are choreographed to crashing of cymbals and the pounding of the drums (in the one shootout, this happens much too literally). Following the phenomenal success of 'Speed' in 1994, the famous critic Roger Ebert, presiding on one of his film fests shortly thereafter, announced a $10K prize to whoever could make a movie (home, amateur, 16mm, 8mm anything) on the concept of perpetual motion, honoring the ingenuity of 'Speed' about a bomb on a bus that would explode if the bus dropped below a certain speed. 'Baby Driver' can certainly stake a claim to that prize to that modest prize, finding the perpetual motion in the unlikeliest places of all - the ciruclar motion of the long playing records sited on the turntable and played by the tonearm of an enormous jukebox. Who would have thought music and mayhem worked together so well!!

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