Buy it... if you're tired of hearing intellectually devoid, stagnant action music from Hans Zimmer and yearn for him to explore intelligently stylish material of a much lesser volume.

Avoid it... if you don't have the patience for a score built to subtly accentuate, rather than openly dominate, a conversational setting.

Zimmer

Frost/Nixon: (Hans Zimmer/Lorne Balfe) When screenwriter Peter Morgan translated the famous 1977 interviews of disgraced former president Richard Nixon by British talk show host David Frost into a London and Broadway play, several Tony award nominations were the result. Many liberties were taken with the six hours of filmed content that caused quite a stir in the media that year, with some circumstances relating to sequences and exact content rearranged to make the play more dramatically appealing. When Ron Howard used the same Morgan screenplay for his 2008 awards-season film adaptation of the production, he inherited not only the two lead actors from the show, but also the same historical inaccuracies. Regardless of the finer points involving the liberties taken with the content, Frost/Nixon still serves to humanize Nixon in a way that the interview broadcasts succeeded in accomplishing. Rather than treating the reviled former president as a larger-than-life figure, as had been done in Oliver Stone's 1995 film about the man, Howard continues to show the vulnerabilities of Nixon despite his immense and stubborn intellect. The play obviously had no use for the kind of music that would be necessary for the film, and Howard turned to his Backdraft and The Da Vinci Code collaborator, Hans Zimmer, to create music that would compliment the tone of the interview process without contributing a melodramatic atmosphere to their otherwise low-key, intelligent jousting. The music for any film based on the subtle, verbal battles of two men is a daunting task, and pictures like Frost/Nixon are not generally known for their scores unless that music intrudes on the content in a negative way.

For avoiding this pitfall entirely, Zimmer and his long-time associate Lorne Balfe alone earn considerable praise. They managed to create a largely atmospheric, but not automatically dull score that accentuates the sense of anticipation in the interview process without ever rising to levels of dramatic interference that would draw attention to itself. Some listeners may find this approach too subtle for their liking, writing off the score as dull when comparing it to Zimmer's other, far more hyperactive material of the year. But this score is too surprisingly smart to dismiss it with such haste. There is little in the score for Frost/Nixon that breaks new stylistic ground for Zimmer. Instead, the effectiveness of the mostly themeless music exists in the careful rendering of those sounds heard before in the composer's career. This is a score of rhythm. In fact, everything about it revolves around the concept of momentum. It senses the importance of the interview and perpetually builds movement towards the inevitable moment when Nixon finally apologizes to the country for some of his Watergate-related transgressions. Frosts' personality is well suited for this sense of growing urgency, as the interviews would help catapult his status to much higher levels. The form that these rhythms take depends on the perspective of the individual scenes, but they can range from Thomas Newman-like electric bass and clanging of unconventional sounds to the more recognizable churning on low strings that has defined much of Zimmer's recent career. Both ends of the spectrum are satisfying. The latter reprises hints of the ostinato structures heard in The Da Vinci Code and the composer's two Batman scores, exemplified by resilient performances in "Watergate" and "Pardon the Phlebitis."

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More interesting than Zimmer's usual employment of cellos and bass strings, in many ways, is the more flamboyant side of this mechanically rhythmic construct, as heard in "Beverly Hilton," "Insanely Risky," and "Research Montage." These three cues are highly engaging in their suave, but still restrained demeanor; their sense of style creates an allure that has been missing from so many other recent Zimmer scores that attempt to generate movement through similar ostinatos. The singular "Cambodia" cue offers the score's only lush moment of reflection, and it reminds of the highlights of The House of the Spirits and other early Zimmer dramas. Aiding in the sense of the inevitable in Frost/Nixon is the use of ticking percussion, especially in the early cues on the album presentation. This "time bomb" effect contributes to the sense that many viewers had when watching the interviews that Nixon's overconfidence would eventually lead to a meaningful admission. Indeed, this effect very smartly weaves in and out of the mix for specific moments of setup and sparring in the film. Ultimately, Frost/Nixon represents what early supporters of Zimmer's career have been longing for over the past ten years: style and intelligence in construct and tone. It's ironic that with so much news generated by the Oscar ineligibility (and eventual eligibility) of Zimmer and James Newton Howard's popular but intellectually devoid The Dark Knight, this score by the former and Defiance by the latter are far better representatives of the composers at their best. You indeed need to exercise patience when first listening to Frost/Nixon, because by its nature it establishes an ambient mood rather than a truly lasting impression. This is the best that any composer could have accomplished with this script, and it's especially satisfying to see Zimmer's name attached to it. ****   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Hans Zimmer reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.09 (in 80 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.08 (in 253,581 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.