Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you appreciated Michael Giacchino's workmanlike approach to the third film in this franchise and are prepared for a wilder ethnic ride with even better interpolations of Lalo Schifrin's original main theme. Avoid it... if you prefer Giacchino to really take this series' music in a meaningful new direction or if, as in many cases before, you wish to hear his work recorded and mixed in anything livelier than the incredibly dry, flat, and dull manner that often sucks the life out of his music. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol: (Michael Giacchino) The franchise of Mission: Impossible movies has defied the laws of Hollywood physics by not only remaining viable with the same primary star for so long, but actually accumulating critical acclaim and box office success as it rolled through its fourth entry in 2011. Led once again by Tom Cruise in the roles of star and producer, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol represents the first live-action movie by successful animation director Brad Bird. Its plot takes agent Ethan Hunt and his IMF colleagues on a long journey around the word to stop a former Russian nuclear strategist from acquiring the launch codes and technical capacity to instigate a nuclear attack on the United States as part of his effort to use mutually assured nuclear annihilation as a way to cleanse the gene pool. He must have spent a few hours in a rural American Wal-Mart. While on the trail of this malcontent, Hunt and his team escape massive explosions at the Kremlin, dizzying heights at the world's tallest building in Dubai, and the technological nightmare of Mumbai, the best of these exploits shot in IMAX rather than 3D capabilities as per the director's wishes to accentuate the immensity of the shoots. The film blasted past the performance of Mission: Impossible III in 2006 in the process of dominating the worldwide box office at the end of 2011 and start of 2012, surprisingly accruing over half a billion dollars in grosses. Also in the favor of Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol is some much-needed continuity in its musical style. For the first two films, the franchise employed Alan Silvestri (who was fired), Danny Elfman, and Hans Zimmer (and his team of assistants) to adapt Lalo Schifrin's famous thematic identities from the original television series. With the arrival of J.J. Abrams to the concept for the 2006 entry, along came Michael Giacchino, Mission: Impossible III his first major foray into summer blockbusters. His score was functionally workmanlike, struggling at times to connect but succeeding in returning the style of Schifrin's music to the forefront. The composer's reprise of those efforts for Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol is in part due to Abrams' continued involvement as producer but also because of a prior successful collaboration with Bird for his well respected animated ventures. Giacchino continues to explore some of the ideas he conjured for the third film, including the same general style of jazzy and technological action with a hint of yesteryear from percussion and electric bass, but this assignment required the composer to jump through several ethnic hoops along the way as well. Enthusiasts of Schifrin's original material will have plenty to salivate over as well. For the generic action sequences devised for the story of Ghost Protocol, Giacchino responds with orchestral music similar to his other franchise entry, but with perhaps a few more of the ostinatos that Zimmer and John Powell have forced upon any chase sequence in a Hollywood movie. As a nod to Schifrin, many of these sequences feature retro percussion at the forefront of the mix that may be obnoxious for some listeners. Loyalty to Schifrin's main franchise theme was a primary concern for Giacchino, the majority of his cues making at least some incorporation of the progressions, some of which quite creative. Two full-blooded expressions of the theme in its original glory are presented on album, too, "Light the Fuse" containing the most satisfying, jazzy interpolation of the idea since Elfman's entry. Giacchino also revisits some of his motifs from his previous score, allowing the listening experience to unwind with a lengthy and lovely extension of his theme for Hunt and his wife (which still sounds like an idea straight from his "Lost" television series scores) in "Putting the Miss in Mission." The other motifs in Ghost Protocol are all seemingly adapted into or built upon four-note phrases, perhaps a nod to this movie's position in the franchise. While these identities do begin to take hold in the latter half of the film, the Schifrin theme really carries the identity of the entire score. The villain is treated to an unfortunately meager motif that attempts to instill menace but rather underplays the character. That's a bit strange considering the fact that Giacchino went truly overboard when addressing the musical style of each locale in the plot. The Russian sequence ("Kremlin With Anticipation" and "From Russia With Shove") receives token male chorus that's not as blatantly silly as the Prokofiev use by James Horner in Red Heat, but the placement here is just as artificial. Equally ridiculous is the Arabic slant in "A Man, A Plan, A Code, Dubai," though at least Giacchino whips out some full-ensemble melodic grace in his mutation of the Schifrin theme for this style. More interesting is the source-like music for the Indian locations, "Mood India" once again taking Schifrin in bizarre directions but at least building into several minutes of super cool adaptations. Less palatable is "Mumbai's the Word," which will be a little too much Bollywood for most Giacchino collectors, the opening of that cue a humorous merging of Mychael Danna and A.R. Rahman. The rest of the score is less flashy, but like its predecessor, it gets the job done. A definite detraction from this soundtrack is its totally deflating mix. Giacchino scores all are among the driest, flattest, and dullest currently recorded and released on album, but Ghost Protocol is so muted at times that it seems like it's practically in monaural sound. The completely dead mix continues to diminish even Giacchino's liveliest works. *** Track Listings:
Total Time: 76:28
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