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Co-Produced by:
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Flavio Motalla
Dave Giuli
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Release Date:
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November 4th, 2003
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Availability:
Regular U.S. release.
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Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you are curious to hear a blending of Christopher Young's
bluesy styles with Thomas Newman's contemporary rhythms and
instrumentation.
Avoid it... if less than ten minutes of fully-charged thriller music
from the orchestra is not worth wading through a lengthy underscore of
slight rhythms.
Filmtracks Editorial Review:
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Runaway Jury: (Christopher Young) The newest adaptation
of a John Grisham novel to the big screen, Runaway Jury is the first
venture by composer Christopher Young into Grisham's courtroom dramas.
Casual viewers of Grisham stories on screen will probably recall Dave
Grusin's style for the Academy Award-nominated The Firm a decade ago,
and Young doesn't stray too far from that tested formula. The film was
directed by Gary Fleder, whose films often feature the work of composer Mark
Isham. While Isham may have succeeded with an adequate score for Runaway
Jury, Felder went with Young, who has proven himself versatile in urban
thriller settings. The film itself, on the other hand, took many of the
wrong turns for Grisham fans. Instead of featuring a landmark court case
against big tobacco at the heart of the story, the filmmakers have twisted
the bad guys around towards the gun industry. Even with that major change
aside, the screenplay suffered from some poor choices in adaptation and made
a film that was somewhat flat all the way to the end, even when the motives
and secrets of all of the characters are revealed in rapid succession. For
Christopher Young, score collectors will wonder immediately if he was given
a template of Thomas Newman styles within to work, because the finished
result of the composition is a piece heavy with Newman references and a
touch of Grusin and Young's own style thrown into the mix. The contemporary
rhythms, especially with the attitude of "less is more," make Runaway
Jury a very typical Thomas Newman score, especially when considering the
cyclical, somewhat off-kilter performances of percussion and traditional
guitar with an orchestral string section lending an occasional hand in three
or four note bursts. To a much lesser extent, some Grusin ideas are conveyed
through the style of the purely underscored sequences, and Young's thriller
writing is evident in the few action cues.
The opening suite of themes (a 'motif' is perhaps a better
way to describe their development) is saturated with Thomas Newman rhythms
and instrumentations, but sans the clunky keyboarding that often accompanies
the more modern, urban variation on Newman's style. Young does two things to
that basic sound to vary it just enough to maintain its own personality.
First, he uses a bluesy swing in his piano rhythms, as well as a muted
trumpet, to establish the rather seedy lack of respectability in the actions
of big corporations. Secondly, with the story located in New Orleans, Young
adds a lazy, but stylish female vocal to that swing of his own rhythms
(introduced in earnest in "Dumb Witness," the second cue on the album) for
the steamy atmosphere of the Deep South in America. The opening suite
establishes such a knock-off Thomas Newman sound that the score takes the
two or three truly frightening cues of thrilling action before Young seems
to get his own style on its feet. Highlighted by "Shark Tactics," Young's
orchestral turmoil and ensemble crashes provide the hair-raising edge where
Newman, Isham, or Grusin could likely have missed the mark. The mass of
underscore in Runaway Jury consists of simple blues rhythms that take
a page or two from Wonder Boys, and with these cues built to exist
behind the dialogue in the film, they don't have much to inspire a solo
listen. Young's piano is always present, as usual, and he does make some
nice moves overlapping acoustic and electrical guitars in these background
cues. He also uses some creative percussion to help propel the rhythms (from
the clanking of light metal to that wood block you heard in places like
Species). But on the whole, the opening suite, the falsely noble "Not
Lady Liberty," and two most major action pieces are the only interesting
cues in Runaway Jury. On album, the 60-minute running time is likely
the score's worst enemy, and 25 to 30 minutes of this score could have been
edited into an equally (if not more) interesting package. Nevertheless,
Young continues to succeed in all variants of the thriller genre. ***
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Viewer Ratings and Comments:
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• 1. Runaway Jury (5:37)
• 2. Dumb Witness (1:33)
• 3. Cheaper by the Dozen (3:06)
• 4. The Game's Afoot (1:24)
• 5. Not Lady Liberty (1:56)
• 6. Shark Tactics (4:28)
• 7. The Divine Komeda (1:59)
• 8. Jury for Sale (2:52)
• 9. Easter's Con (1:02)
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• 10. Voir Dire (6:05)
• 11. Habeas Corpus (2:43)
• 12. Rankin Fitch (3:45)
• 13. Spilt Whiskey (2:09)
• 14. The Devil's Not Such a Bad Guy After All (2:03)
• 15. Erase Her From My Heart (4:17)
• 16. Fayeth in Fate No More (8:32)
• 17. Who Hurt You? (3:06)
• 18. Unconditional Love (2:51)
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Insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
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