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Unknown: (John Ottman/Alexander Rudd) There is one
proven absolute in the world of cinema that every viewer should
remember: if you for whatever reason have lost your memory and cannot
recall your own identity, then there's a 99.8% chance that you're a
professional assassin. That's right, assassins in movies seem to have a
problem bonking their heads. And then, of course, they're pursued
because they have become a liability, and where movie scripts diverge is
in the type of organization trying to kill their former employee.
Sometimes it's shady government agencies. Sometimes it's a former
partner. Sometimes it's local law enforcement. Sometimes it's your
scummy corporate employer. Without much deviation, Jaume Collet-Serra's
2011 thriller
Unknown follows this predictable template, telling
of one such unfortunate assassin on assignment who is involved in a car
wreck and awakes in the hospital actually believing that he is the
innocent cover man he was pretending to be. Before long, he has nasty
agents pursuing him and, in true Hollywood fashion, he decides that the
initial target he had before losing his mind is actually the protagonist
of the entire affair and has to defend this noble scientist from a
sudden demise at the hands of his former employer. A lead performance by
Liam Neeson has been most frequently cited as the most positive aspect
of
Unknown, and audiences afforded Warner Brothers a fairly
surprising return despite serious plausibility problems with the script.
Returning once again in his collaboration with Collet-Serra is composer
John Ottman, a veteran of the thriller genre but disappointingly
inactive in his feature scoring career over the previous few years. His
talent for creating interesting scores for even the worst of cinematic
situations hasn't been able to deter his luck in being attached to a
series of box office bombs, though early 2011 showed signs of life with
his concurrent thriller work for
Unknown and
The Resident.
His attachment to
Unknown was supplemented by material written by
young British composer Alexander Rudd, whose screen credits are
extremely limited. No initial information was forthcoming about the
balance of duties between the two composers, or even how Rudd (whose
mentor has been Randy Newman, not Ottman) became involved with
Unknown, though Ottman does receive primary (and sometimes sole)
credit on promotional materials. From the perspective of an Ottman
collector,
Unknown will sound familiar and disappoint at the same
time, yielding a hint of the rhythmic enticement of his prior successes
in the genre while degenerating into messy, ambient sound design in its
second half.
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Without a doubt, the score for
Unknown is a tale
of two halves. Ottman's thriller works often open with haunting themes
(
Gothika,
Hide and Seek, etc) and typically become more
mundane as they progress, but the spiral downward in
Unknown is
truly massive. The best music that Ottman has ever produced in the genre
has involved a keen sense of rhythmic movement, whether in the flair of
Incognito or the creative sound of
Point of Origin. This
time, he again opens a score by establishing a strong feeling of motion,
both in the churning rhythmic undertones and the meandering personality
of his melodies for the film. In a way, think Mark Mancina's thematic
highlights from
Domestic Disturbance without the dominant
Basic Instinct influence. With the exception of the shrieking
dissonance in the latter half of "The Accident," the nearly twenty
minutes from "Welcome to Berlin" to "Man Alone" quietly pulsate through
urgent, engaging rhythms on piano, puffing woodwinds, restrained strings
and electric guitar, and light percussive effects, usually exploring
some variation on the piano-led primary theme. The best melodic cue is
easily "Welcome to Berlin," which generates a contemporary atmosphere
with the supporting guitar (much like a toned-back version of what Brian
Tyler did with the concurrent
Battle: Los Angeles) while the
orchestral ensemble is led by piano and cello solos of deceptively
elegant professionalism. That first twenty minutes churns through the
thematic ideas with the same momentum and sound design as
Point of
Origin, pointing
Unknown in the direction of a solid
three-star listening experience. The second half of the score, however,
is barely tolerable, resorting to cliched slashes and strikes befitting
an assignment like
House of Wax. Cues like "Evil Car" and "The
Hospital" are devoid of the same linear structure, instead shifting
obnoxiously between screeching string dissonance and pounding sound
effects. A specific sample of an echoing thud is abused mightily during
the chase half of
Unknown, and what parts don't utterly repel you
will bore you with their very tepid atmospheric stature. Only late in
"Martin vs. Martin" does the humanity in the score return, and "Nice to
Meet You" closes it out with a pretty flute sequence and short reprise
of the main theme and its rhythmic foundation. Ultimately, Ottman and
Rudd's music basically suffices, but the former composer's ability to
generate style and movement in all situations is wasted in much of
Unknown, begging inevitable questions about Rudd's involvement.
Ottman typically writes music that is interesting even if it isn't
particularly enjoyable, and unfortunately only less than half of this
effort qualifies in even that basic regard. Approach with caution and
turn it off after twenty minutes.
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| Bias Check: | For John Ottman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 3.22 (in 32 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.03
(in 17,523 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
