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Gone in 60 Seconds: (Trevor Rabin) Films that rely upon car
chases without providing a compelling reason for them are destined to fail.
Despite that fatal characteristic of the thriller
Gone in 60 Seconds, the
remake of a 1974 film of the same name went ahead anyway. Ultimately, unless
you're a devoted fan of Jerry Bruckheimer's often mindless productions or a
motorhead who simply wants to see the cars in action, there's no redeeming
element to a plot that forced a master car thief played by Nicolas Cage to
combine forces with Angelina Jolie, Robert Duvall, and a host of other shallow
characters to steal 50 cars in three days. By the year 2000, Bruckheimer had
clearly defined the kind of music that he wanted to hear in his films. It was a
ball-busting, head-slamming, in-your-face, no-nonsense attitude that Bruckheimer
offered in his projects that required a specific genre of masculine music. After
teaming up with Hans Zimmer for his early pictures, Bruckheimer then chose former
Yes band rocker Trevor Rabin, often associated on the periphery of Zimmer's
industry influence, to be his regular guy when a testosterone heavy film was in
production. Unlike Zimmer, Rabin typically catered more towards his prior Yes
audience of rock fans rather than the Zimmer-inclined group of open-minded
orchestral film score collectors. In his early days, Rabin still, if possible,
attempted to establish a theme or motif that would at least bookend a film and
its score. By 2000 and 2001, however, Rabin's compositions for cinema began to
stray away from the basic rules of film scores. Between
Gone in 60 Seconds
and
The One, Rabin had gone from being a film composer to a human sound
effects machine whose job it was to pump up the audience with adrenaline by using
indiscriminate hard rock music at high volumes. As a sign of the times, perhaps,
the scary side of this eventuality was the fact that the majority of mainstream
audiences simply accepted this moment-to-moment blasting of loud, unorganized
rock music as a new standard of summer blockbuster films. Part of this transition
may have resulted from Bruckheimer's insistence that this kind of sound effect
noise serve as music, but some of the responsibility for this transition also
fell on the shoulders of Rabin, who was happily producing scores that followed
few of the basic foundational rules of Music Composition 101 coursework.
For
Gone in 60 Seconds, the music basically works, and
this is because the film suffers from the same mindless, primitive construction
of nonstop displays of testosterone. The most upsetting aspect of
Gone in 60
Seconds, and, for that matter, half a dozen of his other recent works, is
that Rabin is a very capable composer. He had shown glimpses that he had
understood the path towards combining rock music with traditional symphonic
elements, but he kept slipping back into aimless hard rock habits. The score for
Gone in 60 Seconds suffers because it can't establish a consistent theme,
motif, or dominant instrumentation to identify itself as a unique work. Even if a
theme isn't utilized well, a very effective score can be built out of an emphasis
on a motif performed by a single instrument. No such recurring, dominant idea
exists in
Gone in 60 Seconds. Rabin also seemed to be reluctant to choose
between a sensitive sound, highlighted by keyboarding and female vocals and heard
in contemplative tracks, and the driving, explosive rips of electric guitars.
Rabin would prove in
The One that the heavy guitar sequences can work if
the film allows two or three minute intervals during which he can continuously
develop those guitar ideas into a substantial motif that can define the score.
This time around, however, the score changes mood too quickly and too often, and
the cues that most Rabin die-hards will prefer are too short to appreciate. No
better an example is the enticing "Memphis Jumps Elle," which reaches a
triumphant climax and then immediately dies. There might be merit in softer cues
like "Keys to Eleanor" and "Halls of Dalmorgan" that, through their simplistic
harmony, offer a hint of a heart. At the same time, there are bizarre choices by
Rabin for the sound effects that run as the background rhythm or free agent
accents. There is no doubt that a traditional film score collector will be
horrified by the electric power drill sounds in "50 Cars" (if they can be
tolerated at all), despite their inherent relation to an auto mechanic's shop
environment. This score could have been functional had a deep bass guitar that
pops up every now and then been expanded into a defining element in
Gone in 60
Seconds. It has a cool, Ry Cooder kind of hip sound (as in "50 Cars") that
never sticks around for longer than 15 seconds. Overall, the score is not one of
Rabin's more interesting, even for many of his own fans who prefer lengthy cues
of driving guitar rhythms. The album is short, which may be a blessing here, and
it dissolves into an inglorious end.
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| Bias Check: | For Trevor Rabin reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 2.5 (in 12 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 2.64
(in 12,557 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
