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| CD Reviews: Veronica Guerin and The Rundown |
| Posted By: Andrew Granade, Nick Joy on April 13, 2004 - 10:00 PM |
CD Reviews: Veronica Guerin and The Rundown
Veronica Guerin ***
HARRY GREGSON-WILLIAMS
Hollywood 5050466-5820-2-7
15 tracks - 41:03
Harry Gregson-Williams is without exception the most interesting
composer operating out of the Media Ventures stable. While that
forthright statement will undoubtedly garner an equal number of
opposing views along the lines of "Heresy!" or "Faint praise indeed!"
just take a look at his recent track record. Spy Game was an excellent score
that successfully carried the movie between its many global locales and
last summer's Sinbad literally
blew it's big brother (Pirates of the
Caribbean: Curse of the Multiple Composers) out of the water.
Now Gregson-Williams is back with Phone
Booth director Joel Schumacher for this dramatization of the
Irish journalist who was assassinated by drug dealers. Instead of
taking the hackneyed, easy route and covering the score with Irish jigs
and a barrage of pipes (Mr. Horner, please stand up) Gregson-Williams
offers a more respectful take on Irish music.
The presence of Sinead O'Connor is arguably the score's greatest lack
of imagination; one loses count of the number of Gaelic tales that she
has sung on (Michael Collins, In the Name of the Father, etc).
But lack of originality notwithstanding, the songs ("One More Day" and
"The Funeral") are great tracks, co-written by Hannibal's Patrick Cassidy and
produced by Trevor Horn. There's also some additional music credited to
Michael A Levine.
Kudos to Gregson-Williams for his discovery of street singer Brian
O'Donnell, who really pours his heart out on "The Fields of Athenry."
The composer first heard the singer while researching the movie and
later sent his brother out with a tape recorder to capture the urchin's
colloquial performance. On the disc, the track starts with O'Donnell
singing unaccompanied, but by the one-minute mark the full orchestra
sweeps in and transforms the track into something quite different.
A low-key ambient affair that owes more than a nod to The Thin Red Line, Veronica Guerin is an accomplished
emotional piece for those who like their Irish scores with a bit of
bite. -- Nick Joy
The Rundown ** 1/2
HARRY GREGSON-WILLIAMS
Varèse Sarabande 302 066 516 2
24 tracks - 44:32
The hype surrounding The Rundown,
a genre exercise in chase movies set in Brazil, was that Dwayne Johnson
would come into his own as an action star. I was hoping that
Gregson-Williams would similarly come into his own as an action scorer.
But in the end, while you can certainly hear the composer striving for
something new, he too often falls back on the "Bruckheimer Sound."
The score opens promisingly, with a collection of short cues that are
at once this album's strength and weakness. While the score is more
atmospheric than thematic, these cues still need more space to breathe
and develop. For example, at the end of "Jeep Rental," a guitar solo
underscored by a samba beat enters for 25 seconds and then never
reappears -- ever. I could have lived in that sound for several more
minutes, it was so expertly set up, but it disappeared all too quickly.
Yet even with their short durations, these cues are full of quirky
sounds and are bursting with possibilities.
Gregson-Williams absorbed the film's setting by using the School of
Samba Unidos de Vila Isabel and Bloco Ile Aiye, two Brazilian groups.
Their dynamic percussion combines with whistles and jews harps and even
a theme from his Sinbad score
(which pops up toward the end of "Little Swim") to create an
impressively eclectic sound that will bring a smile to your face.
Unfortunately that smile is wiped off by the score's second half. As
the cues get longer, all momentum and interest is lost. "Monkeys &
Rebels," one of the longest cues, signals this change. It endlessly
repeats a musical motive that at 40 seconds would have been
provocative, but becomes stale after three minutes. Then, for the
scores closing cues, Gregson-Williams falls almost entirely into the
Bruckheimer sound he lived in on films such as Enemy of the State. While that
style works fine in technology-driven pictures, it is often out of
place in period or exotic settings (as Pirates of the Caribbean
proved). -- Andrew Granade
MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com
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Today in Film Score History:
December 2 |
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| Aaron Copland died (1990) |
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| Artie Butler born (1942) |
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| Cyril Ornadel born (1924) |
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| Eddie Sauter born (1914) |
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| Francois-Eudes Chanfrault born (1974) |
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| Gerald Fried's score to the Star Trek episode "Shore Leave" is recorded (1966) |
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| Harry Sukman born (1912) |
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| John Williams begins recording his score for Midway (1975) |
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| Lennie Hayton records his score for the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea episode “The Monster from Outer Space” (1965) |
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| Michael Whalen born (1965) |
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| Milton Delugg born (1918) |
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| Richard Markowitz begins recording his music for the three-part Mission: Impossible episode “The Falcon,” his final scores for the series (1969) |
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