Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #946
Written 1/7/05, Revised 10/19/11
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Buy it... if you find enjoyment in John Ottman's ability to turn
predictable thriller scores into overachieving exercises in creative
rhythm and instrumentation.
Avoid it... if no measure of creativity in the soundscape can
compensate for an otherwise mundane collection of redundant techniques
often heard in Ottman's music for B-rate films of this era.
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| Ottman |
Cellular: (John Ottman) If you're the type of
person who loathes cell phones, then perhaps this film's not for you.
The screenwriter of Phone Booth, Larry Cohen, must have decided
that he had conquered the market on phone booth terror, so he turned to
every possible method of thrilling a person with the familiar concept of
a failing cell phone in the plot of 2004's Cellular. In essence,
a tenuous and random cell phone connection between a woman being held
hostage in her own home and an average Joe on the streets sends the
young man on a race against time and his cell phone battery to help this
woman and her family. Despite the numerous plot holes that always arise
when you stretch a topic like this one to such great limits, the film
does survive on its performances and twists in direction. Though
suffering only mild slaps of punishment from critics, the film still
didn't hold well enough with audiences to keep it in the theatres very
long, setting it up nicely for endless cable re-runs. Director David R.
Ellis had been a fan of composer John Ottman's work for The Usual
Suspects and X-Men 2 and thus successfully pursued Ottman for
the scoring duties on Cellular. The plot of intrigue and terror
seemed right up the alley at the time for the composer, who seemed
ever-willing to traverse the range of blockbusters to duds and toy with
any cheap thriller he had time to get his hands on. Once again, it was a
project for which he could often switch between structures in the major
and minor keys for obvious portrayals of good and evil. Even more than
in his initial years as a composer, though, Ottman had become obsessed
in the early 2000's with the idea of recording sound effects associated
with the films he composed for and incorporating some variation of their
sound into a rhythm or distinct instrumental twist that elevates his
music beyond the usual trash that exists for B-rated suspense and drama
flicks. With Cellular, he continued this trend, almost to levels
of unnecessary intelligence for this kind of film, and, in the event you
can't appreciate such music for its thematic and rhythmic integrity,
this technique serves as an interesting study in smaller-budget
ingenuity in instrumentation. Whether Cellular tickles your fancy
or not will depend on your interest in these unusual tactics, because
the score's remaining aspects are otherwise generic.
Thankfully for
Cellular, Ottman did seem to take
shameless pride in his attention to unique sounds. If a purely average,
if not substandard score for a television movie such as
Point of
Origin could be shaped into a delightfully wicked listening
experience on album simply because of the incorporation of typewriter
sounds, then why can't
Cellular be equally as enticing with its
distorted cell phone tones and police sirens? The score opens over the
studio logo with the phone tones, manipulated and overlayed with
woodwinds so that they're not as obvious as they probably needed to be
(they could easily be missed by a casual listener accustomed to large
sample libraries). The police sirens do catch your attention to a
greater extent when their brass renditions are present (as in
"Epiphany/Bank"), though they too seemed underplayed. At some point,
with a score like
Cellular that is merely average in every other
regard, you almost wish that Ottman, who is difficult to even outsmart
in these regards, would hit listeners with even more blatant elements of
musical intrigue. As for the straight suspense and thriller angles in
Cellular, Ottman applies one somewhat elusive, mundane theme for
both the hero and the hostage, appropriate mutations for their separate
performances revealed for the two very different characters. The hero's
thematic representations push the coolness factor, from the hip stealing
of a Porsche to the "Going Shopping" and "Making a Connection" cues,
both of which enjoying some pizzazz from electric guitars and rocking
loops. The hostage's version of the theme exists in "Abduction" and "The
Bait," the latter featuring slurred brass a la Jerry Goldsmith's
The
Shadow.These passages exude the sentimentality you hear from
Ottman's style of writing targeted at a morbidly sad electronic choir
(and brief portions here remind of the main thematic performance in
Gothika). Neither version of the theme is really preferable on
album, and Ottman is careful to make sure that these differing styles
never overlap to any degree. The fuller performances of the idea are
typically restrained to woodwinds, strings, and piano in subtle fashion,
allowing a powerful and commanding brass motif (highlighted by a
resounding grouping of French horns) to steal the personality of
Cellular by the end. Overall, Ottman's creative nature continues
to float what would otherwise be a rather uninteresting project, but all
but the most avid collectors of the composer's music will likely find
the effort to be boringly redundant.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
Bias Check:
For John Ottman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.17
(in 35 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.06
(in 21,480 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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