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Review of Fair Game (John Powell)

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... if you like music that reminds you of the fact that government should make you feel uncomfortable, a sound competently conveyed by John Powell in this cold, prickly score.

Avoid it... if you value continuity of construct beyond just the instrumental palette, in which case this very light variation on the rhythmic movement and percussive slapping of The Bourne Identity will bore you.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Fair Game: (John Powell) All you apologists for former American Vice President Dick Cheney out there need not pay attention to Doug Liman's 2010 adaptation of the books written by Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson, because if you're an apologist for Cheney's evil tenure as the grand puppet master of the White House from 2001 to 2009, then Fair Game is likely to only piss you off. Such staunch conservatives will surely brush aside Fair Game as the stuff of liberal fantasies (especially with actor Sean Penn involved), but the truly scary aspect of the film is the amount of fact included in its narrative. The basics about Plame and Wilson aren't really disputed; the government operative and diplomat were the victims of Cheney's retribution for Wilson's public rebuke of George W. Bush's primary case for war against Iraq (that being the probable existence of weapons of mass destruction). After the revelation of the identity of Plame as a CIA agent, several important contacts working with the American government around the world were killed, and the office of the Vice President was forever tarnished for its political viciousness. The film portrays the spin of these events without relying upon too much narrative fiction (depicting nearly everyone by their real names, including roles for administration henchmen Scooter Libby, Ari Fleisher, and Karl Rove), the villain clearly being Cheney and the clueless goat clearly shown to be Bush, though the tension that makes Fair Game a political thriller despite using recent, known events is generated through the concurrent examination of the complex marriage between Plame and Wilson. Those attempting to forget the Bush administration's disastrous tenure may find redemption in this second half of emphasis in Fair Game, bolstered by strong performances by Penn as Wilson and Naomi Watts as Plame. Not unexpectedly, the film was received with considerable critical praise and was immediately adopted as a likely candidate for awards recognition given its inevitable anti-Bush spin. Liman had collaborated with composer John Powell for his two more successful action/chase thrillers of the 2000's, The Bourne Identity and Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and Powell once again returns, this time for a production with a far more limited budget. There is a sense of propulsive movement to the events in Fair Game that would suggest that a light variant of the score for The Bourne Identity would be merited, the instrumentation largely the same but the tone scaled back to emphasize the intrigue of more realistic espionage and political deceit.

The single dominant characteristic of Powell's music for Fair Game is its cold balance between hazy atmospheric frustration and prickly rhythmic precision. It is no doubt a troubling representation of a political chess game, literally tapping and dancing in restrained scope to mirror the moves made by players in the film. The choice of ensemble is key to making this game work, using varied percussive elements as the connecting tissue between the keyboarded and electric guitar ambience of intrigue and the orchestral strings representing the fleeting warmth of the troubled marriage. There is not enough organic contribution to Fair Game to define it as anything other than a mechanically ominous thriller score, its slapping attitude reflecting the dismissive anger of the federal government while hints of up-tempo, string-performed ostinatos occasionally fight against the grain with mutedly snazzy defiance. While the sum of this equation is sufficient in addressing the battle of wits between a government and its betrayed operatives, the latter portion of fighting rhythmic flair easily produces the highlights of the score when heard on its own, culminating in a slightly redemptive tone of hip gravity in "Testify." The looped rhythms and string (or guitar) contributions begin in "The White House" and slowly build throughout the score until this final moment of satisfaction. There are melodic phrases explored in several of the similar cues in between, though none of them is consistently developed enough to qualify as the score's primary identity. Instead, the attitude generated by the instrumentation and rhythms is the heart of Fair Game, interrupted unfortunately by the cues of ambient droning. This other half of the score begins immediately in "Kuala Lumpur" and will remind listeners of the generically sampled electronic background noise that often dominates Harry Gregson-Williams' lower-budget thriller scores. The later cues "Gathering Intel," "Sixteen Words," and "Run Up to War" continue this drab material; some of the manipulated sounds and overwhelming bass tones in a cue like "Sixteen Words" will offer nothing of substance to even a Powell collector. There is, in a few of these cues, a slight influence of stereotypical Middle Eastern progressions in deeply keyboarded background ramblings, merged finally with the rhythmic character motifs in "Testify." Some listeners will hear a slight sense of humor in the lightly churning demeanor of "Smaky," but otherwise there is little to really warm up to in this score on album. It successfully makes you feel uncomfortable about the concepts and character interactions in the film, and what suffices to that end for the picture is a major detriment to a 40-minute album presentation. Unlike Scooter Libby, Powell can be whole-heartedly pardoned for giving us that uneasy feeling.  **

TRACK LISTINGS:

Total Time: 40:10

• 1. Kuala Lumpur (1:40) • 2. The White House (2:22) • 3. Gathering Intel (3:04) • 4. Joe's Report (3:57) • 5. Bruises (1:37) • 6. Smaky (1:00) • 7. Sixteen Words (2:59)

• 8. Run Up to War (2:55) • 9. Change the Story (3:08) • 10. Uncomfortable Love (6:04) • 11. Breaking Point (3:58) • 12. Ready to Fight (2:55) • 13. Testify (4:32)

NOTES & QUOTES:

The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.

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