Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... only if you enjoyed the score in the context of the film or have a poster of Trevor Rabin on your bedroom wall. Avoid it... if you value film scores that maintain a basic personality though any form of consistent construct or instrumentation. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
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. ** Track Listings:
Total Time: 29:06
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