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| Gregson-Williams |
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Man on Fire: (Harry Gregson-Williams) A remake of the
1987 Elie Chouraqui film of the same name, 2004's
Man on Fire places
Denzel Washington in the role previously occupied by Scott Glenn. In the
most recent of a string of tense crime and action thrillers, director Tony
Scott updates
Man on Fire with all the sensibilities of
Bruckheimer-style illogic and a super-artsy, often-blurred cinematography
that will hopefully someday soon be banned from Hollywood. If you enjoy
seeing Washington's enflamed nostrils in close-ups, then
Man on Fire
was likely entertaining for you; it fared well at the box office, partly due
to the fantastic performances by the lead actors, and spurred considerable
interest in Harry Gregson-Williams' score. Fitting a similar mold as other
Gregson-Williams' collaborations with Scott,
Man on Fire has all the
edgy, modern urban atmospheres that lead naturally to the rougher, more
synthesized angle of Media Ventures projects of the recent past. Murders,
kidnappings, and retribution are the themes of the day, and a little usual
Heitor Pereira guitar music for the Latin elements are obligatory, but
Gregson-Williams faced his most interesting challenge in attempting to
interpolate the harsh action motifs with the soft and tender thematic ideas
for the Dakota Fanning character (the young girl kidnapped). It's easy to
hear that Scott --whether explicitly or otherwise-- asked Gregson-Williams
to pump up the testosterone level for
Man on Fire to levels exceeding
even the techo-thriller
Enemy of the State, for the cues of synthetic
looping are brutal in their volume and intent. If you throw in the use of
several Latin source songs, a little more non-English work from the
ever-popular Lisa Gerrard, some score contributions from other composers,
and, as previously mentioned, the softer character themes for small strings
and piano, you get the potential for one very muddy end product. And mud is
what you get.
Perhaps Gregson-Williams would have been successful with
his conceptual structures for
Man on Fire if he had been able to play
to lesser extremes at both the action and character ends of the spectrum.
The synthesized action cues are truly a degradation to the overall product,
stuttering and ripping without any consistent rhythm through several lengthy
passages. While it is functional music for a man with revenge on his mind,
its inconsistencies on album make the approach very difficult to swallow,
certainly not aided by Gregson-Williams' need, for some reason, to insert
random rapping, clanging, and distorted vocal sound effect noises that have
been so altered by a computer that the end result is frightfully
disconnecting. Placing the soft cues for Fanning and Washington in their
contemplative moments serves to accentuate this disjointed polarity problem;
the soft cues are often very short, most of them hovering around a minute,
and with the action cues including sudden jolts of synthesized orchestral
hits, often echoing in the distance in that trademark Media Ventures
fashion, you can't help but tread through the softer moments with a sense of
caution. The Latin source material is consistent within itself, as is Lisa
Gerrard's contribution. As phenomena go, Gerrard is on her own planet since
Gladiator, and her vocals don't seem to vary much from score to
score. For
Man on Fire, however, her usually smooth voice has been
digitally altered so she sounds as though she's two octaves higher and split
into two people... the overlay is grating on the nerves, and her usual
slurring of notes only worsens the mixing. Still, the lengthy, nine minute
end cue is the reason for much of the interest in this score alone
--significantly moreso than Gregson-Williams' solo efforts here-- so perhaps
it is not surprising to hear a radio edit of Gerrard's performances with a
rather tepid and uninteresting drum loop at the very end of the album. On
the whole,
Man on Fire has several worthy ideas and occasional
potential, but the overall package is disjointed, confused, and suffers from
poorly rendered mixings of Gerrard's voice and totally unnecessary sound
effect sampling by Gregson-Williams. Seek this only if you are confident
with what you heard in the film.
**
| Bias Check: | For Harry Gregson-Williams reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 3.09 (in 22 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.24
(in 42,165 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
