Buy it... for the eerie main title cue and nothing thereafter unless James Newton Howard's cold, ambient suspense techniques can do no wrong for you.

Avoid it... if you expect Howard to have taken any substantial chances in emphasizing the emotional swings of the film's intriguing plot beyond the usual, basic synthetic atmosphere, stock stingers, and understated orchestral motifs.

Howard

A Perfect Murder: (James Newton Howard) Although widely regarded as a remake of the 1954 Alfred Hitchcock film Dial M for Murder, Andrew Davis' 1998 thriller A Perfect Murder only uses the same basic premise before launching in a different direction. Criticized by some critics for diminishing Hitchcock's original, the revision did manage to impress some reviewers with its stage-worthy twists and turns of deceit. Smart casting allowed Michael Douglas to easily fill the role of a Wall Street hedge fund manager married to a much younger heiress played by Gwyneth Paltrow. When his finances take a turn for the worse, he decides to continue financing his lifestyle by arranging the murder of his wife by using her con-man lover (Viggo Mortensen) as the tool. The two men take turns claiming to have the upper hand, teasing the audience into falsely assuming that one has true control over the other. Ultimately, the scared wife has to take matters into her own hands in order to conclude the nasty game played by the two men. The movie's intrigue managed to stir up substantial box office returns, grossing twice its budget and putting the line "That's not happiness to see me" in pop culture lingo. Composer James Newton Howard had already enjoyed a successful collaboration with Davis that included the Academy Award-nominated score for The Fugitive, and he faced few challenges when approaching A Perfect Murder. Given that the tale partially originated on the stage, there was little need for a significant musical presence in the film. Howard's task was to very basically emphasize the somewhat unrealistic environment of the criminal plans at work, maintaining an uneasy ambient background for the dialogue that takes the spotlight. Interestingly, Howard did little to address the posh living conditions of the leading couple or the rather seedy alternative lifestyle of the con-man. There are occasional contemporary elements utilized in the score, though most of the electronic embellishments of the orchestral ensemble exist solely to replace an organic atmosphere with one of unrealistic haze. There are only a handful of stalking and action scenes in the film as well, meriting the occasional explosions of standard stingers. Howard's stance in all of these situations is to play the story very coldly, never making any attempt to infuse a false sense of warmth where one really doesn't exist.

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The ingredients in the music for A Perfect Murder include a standard orchestral ensemble, common synthetic ambient effects, a few contemporary elements such as bass and guitar, and the solo voice of Lisbeth Scott. The latter two elements factor in less than half of the cues for the score, mostly concentrated on album in the first three tracks. The guitar and bass provide Howard's only slightly abrasive modern infusion in "Ever Been to Be to Belize?" (track title screw-up there) and "That's No Happiness to See Me," somewhat heavy percussive loops and dull thumping sounds periodically reminding of Howard's music for the "E.R." television series. The Scott performances are the score's highlight, her voice offering one of the few accessibly harmonic tones despite seemingly being digitally manipulated to give her a chilly distance. That voice may represent the wife's character in some fashion. For the attack sequences, Howard chooses the tried and tested method of thrashing about with timpani and piano stingers, owing a bit to Jerry Goldsmith's L.A. Confidential when they form cohesive rhythmic phrases as in "He's in the Kitchen." In the latter half of A Perfect Murder, Howard seemingly recalls his own work for The Fugitive, the droning bass string and clicking percussion techniques of sparse ambience returning for long, dull periods. In the lengthy "Can You Ever Forgive Me?," however, he finally offers development for the score's primary descending theme, voiced without much sincerity by an oboe. Late in that cue, Howard's standard horn techniques for brazen solitude make an appearance for a moment of gravitational pull. The oboe and slightly warmer strings return with piano in "What Happens If...?," wrapping up the primary theme in tepid fashion. With the theme barely registering in volume and memorability despite several statements, the dreamy vocal tones of "Main Title" end up being the only lasting highlight. This cue also touches upon a vague ethnic tilt to parts of the score (similar, maybe coincidentally, to James Horner's groaning bass effects from the insufferable Jade) while merging the depth of the orchestra with the best of Howard's percussive and electronic applications. Ultimately, however, A Perfect Murder is the type of score that really serves little purpose on album. Its 30 minutes of running time is largely redundant and recycles techniques explored by Howard in far more interesting circumstances elsewhere. Just as there is very little likable character to the film's plot, the score struggles to engage the listener for longer than just a few minutes. **   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For James Newton Howard reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.31 (in 53 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.16 (in 58,041 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.