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| Powell |
Face/Off: (John Powell) The third English-language
feature from acclaimed Hong Kong director John Woo,
Face/Off is
an exhibition of the director's fiercely independent styles in showing
violence. With fight sequences choreographed like a ballet,
Face/Off is eye candy for those who enjoy the art of spraying
bullets and is even more representative of Woo's overarching styles than
his previous
Broken Arrow effort. The problem with this Woo film
in particular is that it requires you to think even less than you
normally would for any of his films, suspending all belief in logic to
buy into the essential plotline that a diligent cop and master criminal
medically swap faces and assume the identity of the other. The film
makes some laughable attempts at posing questions about the intellectual
aspects of these face transplants, and how they affect the behavior of
both men, but make no mistake about it:
Face/Off is just another
cheap thrill for fans of preposterous violence and totally unnecessary
destruction of physical property. In the film music world,
Face/Off would also represent a disturbing trend in film scoring
that would soon be identified as Hans Zimmer's Media Ventures empire.
Signs of Zimmer's slowly receding role in composing for the projects he
was technically hired to score began to surface in 1996, with Woo's
Broken Arrow. After assigning some of the work in that score to
his pupils and friends, he would restrain himself to only the title
theme for
The Rock, and by
Face/Off, he would have
retreated to the role of consultant and producer for composers eager to
emulate his style down to the last drum loop. While some of these
composers, including John Powell in this case, would go on to strong
solo careers, even these artists floundered when first released from the
Zimmer school of action scoring. The most horrific evidence of this
insufferable music came with
Con Air, released just before
Face/Off, and both scores try so hard to extend Zimmer's library
of classical chord progressions and fake cellos that the result is
predictably tiresome.
Perhaps the ills of
Face/Off, and the way in
which Media Ventures spin-off composers try so hard to reinvent dramatic
muscle, can be defined by the first cue. In "Face On," Powell uses the
typical formula of grim beauty in the bass regions and shocks you with
crashes of the synthetic that are meant to get your pulse moving in high
fashion. He uses a piece of Handel's "Messiah" in its ethereal, choral
beauty and interrupts it with shrieking vocal effects and wailing
guitars, as well as the usual fake orchestra hits that Zimmer
popularized over the previous few years. Instrumentally, Powell's choice
for unique instrumentation in
Face/Off is a tingling music box
effect of synthetic percussion in the high metallic ranges, not
unsimilar to the kind of sounds heard in Jerry Goldsmith's more
synthetic scores. But the problem with Powell's plan here is that these
light percussive elements, and the floating rhythms they create, are
habitually busted by the seemingly endless array of drum pad explosions
and overbearing bass beats that can rock your speakers without warning.
Lack of fluidity --or any sense of elegance-- is a fatal flaw in
Face/Off, with the need for extended sequences of action music
leading to frenzies of guitars, electronic orchestra hits in typical
Zimmer progressions, and stuttering rhythms that mark bullet hits well
on screen, but only serve to irritate on album. The last cue finally
maintains cohesion, with a rising violin theme serving some overdue
redemption in category of melody, though even this cue continues the
same broad electronic bass as the rest of the score. One of the more
creative musical elements in the film is the use of Judy Garland singing
"When You Wish Upon a Star" during a brutal attack sequence, and that
insertion is more intriguing than anything Powell generates in his
imitation score. Powell would go on to far better scores when he would
shed his reliance on Zimmer's library of sounds and rhythms.
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For John Powell reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.28
(in 50 reviews)
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