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The Bourne Supremacy: (John Powell) The film adaptation
of the Jason Bourne road to self-discovery does well what it intends to do:
show one ingenious character avoid death countless times, in situations that
defy every reasonable boundary of logic. Bourne does this in many similar
technically gifted ways as James Bond does, and with the success of both
The Bourne Identity and
The Bourne Supremacy on film, the
smell of the franchise's future is fresh indeed. While the plotlines of the
Jason Bourne films are --once again, like the Bond films-- ridiculous in
their relentless attempts to produce convincing assassination scenarios,
The Bourne Supremacy in particular has played its hand quite well
with critics and audiences. We may still not know the truth about the title
character or why everyone in the known universe is trying to kill him, but
he is at least consistently presented to the audience with enough precision
by Matt Damon to elevate the film to the higher regions of its own genre.
Along with much of the crew and cast, composer John Powell was re-hired to
extend his services for the franchise, and he was likely asked to extend the
general action and suspense material from the first film into the second.
Despite the first film's success, Powell's score for
The Bourne
Identity alone did not break much new musical ground, often degenerating
into mindless noise when accompanying one of the film's many action
sequences. Much of the score's content seemed like leftover scraps and
samples that had fallen under the table at a Media Venture feast, featuring
little intriguing material to identify with the character's emotional
plight. The second film,
The Bourne Supremacy, offers up a second
chance for Powell to further develop his music for the character, and he
does so with impressive revision. Interestingly, both the character
development and concentration on suspense have largely overtaken the brash
keyboard-rendered action hits, and it's much easier to hear Powell's thought
process as the score for
The Bourne Supremacy progresses.
A larger orchestral ensemble is heard in
The Bourne
Supremacy, with a nearly full brass section accompanying the strings,
electronics, and solo bassoon (once again performed by Michael O'Donovan). A
band-oriented percussion section is similarly offered as well, but the most
emphasis of any section in
The Bourne Supremacy is strongly placed on
the strings. Powell had created a choppy string motif to represent Bourne's
endeavors in the first film, along with a staggered and non-heroic string
theme over the top of that rhythm, but much of that material was overpowered
by other elements in the first score. Powell does not make the same mistake
in
The Bourne Supremacy, allowing the strings to really put forth the
sophisticated side of Bourne's capabilities; they are strictly business in a
rhythmic sense, never making light of Bourne's theme, and never extending
themselves to romanticism outside of, perhaps, the final, apologetic score
cue. The solo bassoon is a curious sound to serve as the identity for
Bourne's internal dilemma, but Powell does faithfully present it at moderate
volumes in the more reflective cues (such as "New Memories"). The full-blown
action music is surprisingly minimal in
The Bourne Supremacy,
resorting only twice to crashing electronic mayhem and instead marching with
precision in cues such as "Berlin Foot Chase," which adds a sharp piano to
the Bourne action motif. The electric guitar causes the score to devolve
slightly in "Bim Bam Smash," although Powell decently avoids the temptation
to present Bourne in a "cool" fashion, only dabbling on the edge of heroism
or "coolness" in the slower rhythmic sections. Both the guitar performances
on the Indian beach in "Goa" (a neat twist on the title theme) and the
aforementioned rhythms in "Nach Deutschland" are a pleasant turn of events
for Powell's development in the Bourne franchise. On album, Powell's music
is more enjoyable in its clarity, and the final score cue ("Atonement")
begins to show a more varied and interesting side of both the film and its
music. The Moby song at the end (unrelated to Powell's score) is a good fit
with the attitude of score... slightly pained but adequately determined in
tone. While Powell's
The Bourne Supremacy may not have any exquisite
moments, it has more focus and sophistication than its predecessor, and it
suits both the film and its album well enough to match the title character's
continuing development.
***
| Bias Check: | For John Powell reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 2.96 (in 25 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.11
(in 35,140 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes a list of performers, but no extra information about the score or film.
