Buy it... only if you are familiar with the score's role in the film, and are comfortable with the understated style of Howard Shore's thrillers of the 1990's.

Avoid it... if you expect any interesting instrumental or thematic development in an otherwise bland and atmospheric effort.

Shore

The Game: (Howard Shore) In what amounted to a very typical role for Michael Douglas, his character of Nicholas Van Orten is a wealthy man in control. Alone, cold, and calculated. But, like any good Douglas role in a 1990's thriller, Van Orten is destined to be mentally and physically challenged beyond his wildest dreams. As a gift from his brother on his 48th birthday, he receives a subscription to "the game," a shady service that never really tells you what you are about to receive. As the audience soon discovers, this service is a group that provides real life thrills for its subjects, creating excitement and stress that a person could never expect to encounter in real life. Douglas is a man on the run and untrusting of his surroundings, all the while trying to maintain his arrogant attitude during the process of solving the game. The film relies on the actor's performance for its success, and Douglas delivers. But in the film's attempt to make you believe that all the events in its script are actually possible, it leaves you with so many massive holes in logic that audiences quickly discarded it the moment they left the theatres. As such, The Game didn't perform that well. It does have the typical atmosphere of a David Fincher film, with dark San Francisco streets containing hints of noir style that eventually yield to post-modern shades of black. Returning from his collaboration with Fincher for Seven is composer Howard Shore, whose career was defined by such films in his pre-Lord of the Rings years. While some of his collectors will maintain that the late 1990's were a time of great exploration by the composer into the realms of suspense and horror, mainstream listeners will find very little from the era that will compete with his later efforts. His score for The Game is highly representative of the suspense music he often produced in that time, and it is even considered to be less engaging than his other similar scores.

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The score for The Game is a clear example of music that only marginally enhances the film in a few select sequences, and the film floats the score for the remainder of its duration. Shore opens the film and score with an elegant, but subdued title theme that will serve as the score's only easy listening. Its solo piano performance leads a waltz rhythm to a very lonely theme, with a slight twist of jazz providing that hint of noir style. The theme is a tortured one, so slow that it's barely recognizable. Its lone harmonious chord shift in its mid-section is the highlight of the score, as is Shore's very subtle incorporation of the opening to the "Happy Birthday" song twice in between performances of the title theme. The second statement introduces high range synthetic atmosphere and a layered string section. Those strings would be used in their fullest to represent the Consumer Recreation Services company in its two tracks on album. Meandering bass strings and extremely low range woodwinds are joined by brass in a secondary role for this theme, fleshed out with its most menacing performance in "Congratulations on Choosing C.R.S." The title theme is only heard in fragments thereafter, including the bittersweet and somewhat morbid conclusion in "Pulling Back the Curtain." The most memorable aspect of the score for The Game is the use of a staccato piano motif that bangs itself into the film as Douglas first notices a harlequin clown in his den. That sparse and striking motif, with the piano very starkly pounding at high ranges at the same note until it reaches its own crescendo, would repeat as the suspense in the film continues. As a technique, it's effective, especially in the film, but on album it's nothing less than an annoyance. The remainder of the score is absent of any personality aside from the piano, which flutters randomly as the primary instrument of mystery. Electronics and perpetual string dissonance eventually lead to horror crescendos of the same in "Mausoleum." The inclusion of the Jefferson Airplane song at the end is distracting and incongruous. Overall, The Game is a weak score, and largely uninteresting outside of the opening cue. **   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Howard Shore reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.43 (in 23 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.25 (in 93,154 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.