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The most interesting aspect of Domestic Disturbance is easily the irony that Mancina wrote a better Goldsmith-like score for the film than Goldsmith himself may have been able to provide. So thorough are the Goldsmith influences in Mancina's finished score that there has been speculation about the possibility that the younger composer adapted material written by the veteran one for the film. That rumor, however, has never been confirmed. What is easy to confirm, however, is that the score for Domestic Disturbance is highly influenced by Goldsmith's Basic Instinct. Even the label for its album release, Varèse Sarabande, went so far as to mention the similarity on its press kit for the product. Another certainty is that Mancina has clearly claimed that there was no temp-track imitation at work here; he has maintained that the director did not thrust Basic Instinct (or any score, for that matter) upon him. So that means that either Goldsmith resurrected the Oscar-nominated score himself and Mancina adapted it into his own replacement material, or Mancina alone decided to pay tribute to Goldsmith by conjuring that resurrection himself. In any case, Mancina produced both a title theme and a smooth rendering of the idea that mirror much of the suspense of the motifs and instrumentation in Goldsmith's Basic Instinct title tracks without laying on the heavy sexual undertones and synthetic effects. It is, strangely enough, a low-key organic variation on the prior score. To this end, Mancina added a few more contemporary touches to the Basic Instinct equation, incorporating an acoustic guitar and bass to accompany the woodwinds and strings that do much of the comparatively straight imitation. The performance is equal to Goldsmith's to such an extent that Mancina even employs the percussion to produce echoing waves that follow each phrase of the theme. Mancina arranged this material into roughly nine minutes near the start of the album and this music, combined with the upbeat "Guys Sailing" in between, will alone be enough to warrant some appreciation from Goldsmith collectors.

Unfortunately, aside from these sequences, the rest of the score contains only run of the mill suspense music. With the normal techniques of various brass blasts, quivering strings, and drum pounding filling most of the time in the score, there isn't much to write home about when it comes to the handling of suspense. The "Fight/Aftermath" cue is devoid of much climactic development, and the two "Fire" cues prior are anonymous in personality. Mancina does pepper these cues with references to the title theme, but that's not enough to save them. Cynics could extend the comparisons to Goldsmith here as well, given that his thriller music of this era (including Along Came a Spider), tended to be disappointingly dull. It does its job, but the film definitely could have used a fresher angle. The album from Varèse is a well organized presentation of Mancina's contributions. At 29 minutes in length, it fails to generate much of a consistent mood, though the ten minutes of thematic representations of Basic Instinct are grouped for convenience at the start of the product so that you can easily dismiss the rest. For veteran film score collectors, the cross between the theme of Basic Instinct and the piano work of Randy Edelman's The Skulls in these tracks will be unmistakable, and if such blatant imitation bothers you as a listener, then the Domestic Disturbance album will likely drive you up a wall. Still, what Mancina has done with Goldsmith's style is quite commendable; the orchestration and fine recording quality (especially emphasizing the tingling percussive effects) will impress. The bland 19 minutes of suspense material that follows won't be of any interest by comparison, even for those who appreciate material that does its best to reach the same ambient success that Christopher Young has established for similarly poor films. Unless the ten minutes of Goldsmith tribute music is enough of a reward to tolerate the remainder of this product, then Domestic Disturbance is the kind of asterisk or footnote that is best left on a dusty shelf.  ***   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Mark Mancina reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.27 (in 15 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.11 (in 10,877 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.

Total Time: 29:14