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| Davis |
Bound: (Don Davis) The Wachowski filmmaking duo was
in their 20's in the mid-1990's, college dropouts from Chicago making
their first feature film. And
Bound is exactly the kind of debut
you'd expect the two to make. A mixture of genres, the 1996 flick takes
themes from both the Cohen and Marx Brothers and slaps you in the face
with a caper story that throws gangsters and lesbians into a slapstick
environment and twists you half a dozen times until you feel as though
you're part a crime syndicate yourself. In the dangerous environment of
organized crime, two neighboring lesbians carry on not only a sexual
affair but become involved in the increasing body counts as well. It was
certainly offensive to many audiences right away, with graphic violence
and sexual undertones throughout, and if it doesn't annoy your
sensibilities, it could very well leave you puzzled. The film was met
with a substantially positive critical response, though it flew largely
under the radar in theatres because of its arthouse origins. While the
collaboration between composer Don Davis and filmmakers the Wachowskis
is highlighted by the trilogy of
The Matrix films, their start
came two years earlier with this curious entry. Davis was equally
anonymous to mainstream collectors in 1996, having composed mostly
television episodes for "Star Trek" and "SeaQuest." He paid his bills by
serving as a regular orchestrator for both James Horner and Jerry
Goldsmith, among others, his credits including projects as successful as
Titanic and
Air Force One. But his compositional skills
eventually led him down a more unconventional path than such mainstream
scores would suggest, with Davis' output often resulting in interesting
though difficult scores. Indeed, many of the tonally challenging aspects
of the music in
The Matrix were foreshadowed in
Bound from
a technical point of view. On its own, though, Davis' score fails to
really establish itself with a clear identity in the film or on album,
which is a disappointment given the subject matter. There is really
little in the work to suggest a sultry side of the plot, too, and this
surprising absence or allure or sensual swagger perhaps gets back to the
equally missing noir side of the entire affair.
The score is instrumentally creative, and it is this
array of percussive elements and wise use of solos that cooks up the
necessary atmosphere in
Bound. Davis uses tingling synthetics and
outwardly forward and heavily processed drum loops to form the rhythms
of his suspense, occasionally building with a full orchestral ensemble
to bizarre, dissonant crescendos like that at the end of "Thelma and
Louise from Hell." Solo performances by piano and bass unfortunately
seem lost in the bleak environment that Davis attempts to create
elsewhere, with hints of film noir elements always poking around in the
background without pronouncement. One of the more successful elements in
Bound is the incorporation of brutally honest brass, with bold,
muscular statements in deep ranges often highlighting whole notes in
Davis' rhythms with a fantastic sense of menace. In "Chicago's Finest,"
Davis allows one such rhythm over dramatically rolling strings to boil
over in to a glorious statement of intimidation. Enthusiasts of Horner's
orchestrations will enjoy hearing the typical crashing piano in the
lower ranges in "Out of the Closet and Down the Stairs" that had become
a staple of that composer's suspense scores at the time. The emotional
roller-coaster created by the numerous rhythmic crescendos works
similarly to John Ottman's large-scale debut in
The Usual
Suspects, but perhaps the most curious aspect of
Bound is its
lack of sophistication on the sensual front. The lack of a strongly
coherent theme or set of motifs doesn't necessarily hurt this score, but
a clear musical identity for the two lead women, built and evolved
slowly in front us from start to finish, may have assisted the score in
maintaining an identity. The noir-like statement of theme at the end,
with cymbals crashing and timpani pounding, along with the elegant mambo
in the final cue, are a strong finish to the album presentation, and
perhaps glimpses of these ideas could have been better developed
throughout. The score was originally released on album by Supertracks in
1997 as a promotional item and remained readily available through
specialty soundtrack outlets for years. In 2026, the La-La Land Records
label pressed the same presentation on a limited CD and appended Davis'
concert piece inspired by this score, "Illicit Felicity," performed
decently on solo piano. Those who already own the 1997 album won't need
to explore the successor for this somewhat engaging but ultimately
underperforming score.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For Don Davis reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.3
(in 10 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.03
(in 45,563 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
The insert of the 1997 Super Tracks album includes a list of
Davis' credits and an abundance of sexual innuendo. That of the 2026
La-La Land product includes notation about the score and film.
