The coolest movie character of all time, according to Edgar Wright
For almost as long as movies have been around, or certainly since the 1940s, cinema has been synonymous with cool.
Across the world, kids (and grown-ups) can be found in front of the bedroom mirror trying out iconic lines, looks, or even walks that they’ve witnessed on the big screen and thinking, “I just need to be a bit more like that”.
Think of Orson Welles’ wry grin out of the shadows in The Third Man. Clint Eastwood’s ‘punk’ Dirty Harry speech. Sigourney Weaver finally explodes the alien. Pretty much Steve McQueen’s entire career. This is all something that Shaun of the Dead director Edgar Wright understands inherently, and you only need to watch the first five minutes of his bank heist classic Baby Driver to know why.
The opening scene of that film is unbelievably cool. Everything about it is as it should be, certainly if you want the viewers to repeatedly say, probably out loud, “Ohhh that’s so cool.”
Let’s examine it for a moment. In the first few seconds, we see the black alloys of a red Subaru Impreza WRX STI pull up in front of the camera. It’s a cool car.
Next, we witness Ansel Elgort pull out his iPod classic in order to put on a song. It’s important to note that it’s a retro iPod, not an iPhone, because that’s much cooler. Also, he can’t have AirPods in; it has to be a wired connection, with those white Apple headphones. Those are cooler. Then the song begins. And it’s ‘Bellbottoms’ by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, a very cool song by a very cool band. Edgar Wright knows this. But he isn’t done yet.
To the backdrop of violins, breakbeats, and chunky guitar riffs, the camera pans around to reveal Jon Bernthal, a very cool actor. He is wearing sunglasses. Then, as if that weren’t enough, we get Jon Hamm, also wearing sunglasses. That’s enough cool, surely? Nope. Now we have Mexican actor Eiza Gonzalez in the backseat, who is astonishingly hot, but also very cool. She has sunglasses on, too.
Here comes the coolest part, and it pays a sizeable debt to an actor and director we will come to later. Gonzalez, Hamm and Bernthal (but not Elgort, he’s the getaway driver) take a besuited walk in their shades toward a bank as the Blues Explosion tune really gets going and Elgort raps along in the Subaru.
As the heist plays out to muffled screams and gunshots, Elgort readies himself, adjusting the manual gearbox (cooler than an automatic) taking off the manual handbrake (cooler than a modern electric one) and, as his fellow criminals climb back in the car, sets off at speed in reverse, which is much cooler than driving forwards.
We then get two or three minutes of one of the best choreographed car chases in modern cinema, all skidding police cars and ‘that was close’ smiles and notchy gear changes, and it’s all before the credits have even rolled. When they do, they feature a backdrop of a pair of sunglasses. It’s all micro-engineered by Wright to quite simply be as cool as possible. By the time the opening scene is over, you’re already wishing you could not only be as cool as this gang, but a member of the gang yourself.
Wright is, of course, a true student of cinema, and his influences are laid bare in Baby Driver for all to see. Quentin Tarantino’s touch is present throughout, especially thanks to Reservoir Dogs. And more specifically, Michael Madsen, who sadly passed away recently. It’s a measure of just how iconic his work in Tarantino’s 1992 debut film was that if you see solely a pair of black Wayfarer shades, it is his character ‘Mr Blonde’ that often springs to mind.
Pair those Wayfarers with a black suit, and there’s nobody else at all that springs to mind. That iconic group walk down the street in suits and shades, parodied or copied by hundreds of films since, forever done by thousands of male students, or even any guys at a wedding in summertime, is without doubt one of the coolest five movie moments of all time. It may well be the absolute pinnacle of movie cool.
Wright reflected on this after Madsen’s death, paying his own Instagram tribute by writing: “Has any actor ever looked cooler than Michael Madsen did in ‘Reservoir Dogs’? Can you ever listen to ‘Stuck In The Middle With You’ without thinking of him shuffling around, razor in hand? The answer is no. “RIP to the incandescent screen presence of this tender tough guy. Gone too soon.”
Madsen will forever be iconic, always be cool. And thanks to the magic of movies, he’ll always be available to watch walking along in that black suit and a pair of shades. You can try it in the bedroom mirror. But nobody can ever quite match it.
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