Buy it... if you seek perhaps James Horner's friendliest score, one that won't overwhelm you with its themes or performances, but does exude an affable charisma lacking in most of his dramatic works.

Avoid it... if Horner's light jazz theme in the score is only a brief respite from tired dramatic and action material that does foreshadow many later scores for the composer.

Horner

Sneakers: (James Horner) Touted as one of the first mainstream technology capers from modern Hollywood, Phil Alden Robinson's 1992 film Sneakers fell victim to its own self-confidence. Press kits for the film were the first ever to be issued on computer media, and the studio placed all its eggs in the basket of a stellar cast that ended up chewing on a screenplay that didn't live up to the concept's potential. Robert Redford leads a group of industrial espionage experts on a mission of securing a universal code breaker, but their intentions are sometimes mysterious. The quickly paced thriller offered classy, urban suspense and charm, balancing the hard edge of the technology with a sense of humor. Composer James Horner used the occasion to write one of his lesser sleeper hits, a score that has managed to endure better than many others of the era. Horner was at a point in his career when he produced several blockbuster scores that, despite immense popularity, had gained him little praise from critics and his peers. The years 1992 and 1993 were a time when the composer produced introverted scores more often than not; it was music that followed a philosophy of less-is-more that led to some arguable successes (Thunderheart) and some arguable disappointments (Patriot Games) for those fans who were accustomed to his grand styles of the late 1980's. In both quality and style, Sneakers fell somewhere in the middle. It didn't re-use substantial portions of Horner's other works, and introduced a few new techniques that would definitely inform some of his blockbuster hits later in the decade. It also took a few pages from the styles of Elmer Bernstein, Jerry Goldsmith, and Danny Elfman, but, in the end, it still represented the breaking of new ground. What Horner produced for Sneakers turned out to be a more snazzy and less tense version of Goldsmith's The Russia House, with Branford Marsalis once again providing attractive solos on the saxophone. Marsalis is advertised with a picture right on front of the score album's cover (along with the cast, strangely enough), however his role in the score isn't much more than one of secondary accompaniment. He brings life to Horner's simple sixteenth-note themes with his crisp, stylish performances, however, and aids in the upbeat memorability of the score long after the film has faded away.

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The bulk of the score is performed by handful of soloists on synthesizers, Marsalis, select members of the orchestra, and Horner himself. The only jarring breaks in the listening experience come from timpani pounding to mark changes of location in the film. It could be said that there really exists only one true theme in Sneakers, though Horner uses a few familiar progressions to round out the work. A suspense motif of sorts features a hint of elegance at the very outset of the score. The motif begins with a variation on the composer's famous "four-note motif of evil" from Willow and is a versatile tool throughout the score. The composer then launches into a key-shifting rhythm at the 2:00 mark into "Main Title" that Horner must have held in high esteem, because he would eventually tap its distinct rhythms and progressions for several of his scores over the rest of the decade (serving as the eventual basis for the standout title cues in Bicentennial Man and A Beautiful Mind, and especially for the vocals in the latter). In that cue, the sax is combined with a playful female choir that, in conjunction with a descending string figure (that would be reprised to a greater degree in "Cosmo... Old Friend"), will remind listeners of Elfman's styles of the era. The action music in Sneakers is informed by Brainstorm in the handling of brass in "Too Many Secrets" and would itself inform both Apollo 13 and Titanic in the piano and percussion techniques of "Playtronics Break-In." The actual title theme exists in "The Sneakers Theme," "Planning the Sneak," and "...And the Blind Shall See." Two of these three offer a modern, jazzy, percussive rhythm and Marsalis' only vibrant, bright solos in the score. The piano's role in the final cue is also quite enjoyable. The delicate piano introductions in "Too Many Secrets" and "The Sneakers Theme" are direct precursors of The Spitfire Grill and others, and they create an ambience of technological magic that functions well in context. Overall, the trick to enjoying Sneakers is remembering that in 1992, these ideas were largely new, and the score was therefore a refreshing entry in Horner's continuously expanding career. For collectors of the composer's scores, Sneakers has a few tracks that are a must on any compilation of his themes. While it may not be the classic that some Horner fans believe it to be, Sneakers remains highly original and entertaining. ****   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

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For James Horner reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.13 (in 98 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.25 (in 184,725 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.