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| Tyler |
Fast Five: (Brian Tyler) Rarely do you witness a
studio attempt to significantly alter the direction of a wildly
successful franchise midstream, but Universal decided with its fifth
installment in the series of
The Fast and the Furious that the
time had come to push the concept down a "more serious" path. Despite
the phenomenal box office prowess of the franchise over the course of
the 2000's, it was seen by studio executives as containing a built-in
ceiling, a limit to the breadth of its audience because it was viewed as
simply a "car culture" topic. For 2011's
Fast Five and beyond,
Universal's intent is to shift gears and force the concept into the
straight action genre, carefully maintaining the ideas of heists and
occasional car chases, but nearly eliminating the street racing
emphasis. Even though the earlier movies were rather brainless and
didn't really appeal to those who had never been in a car that has spun
cookies in an empty parking lot, it's admittedly disappointing to see
Hollywood's most famous street racing franchise die in such a manner.
But with the addition of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson to the duo of Vin
Diesel and Paul Walker,
Fast Five is the first embodiment of that
new bullet-ridden action focus. Interestingly, this direction seemed to
have worked immediately, critical response to
Fast Five better
than all of its predecessors and grosses blasting through springtime
records for all of cinema. Diesel and Walker are once again reunited,
following the events of
Fast & Furious with escape, chase, and
heist sequences that reset at the end (with the help of yet another
hidden scene after the credits) in anticipation of the next feature. The
location of
Fast Five is primarily Rio de Janeiro, and because
these films always contain a high number of song placements, that flavor
translates into a soundtrack consisting of reggae and Latin music that
also inhabits the song compilation album for the movie. The shift in the
franchise's emphasis also changes composer Brian Tyler's approach to its
original music for this, his third consecutive score for the concept.
Not only is his work for a straight action film likely to be longer, but
also streamlined in style as well. Although Tyler is more than competent
in the conventional action genre, one does have to wonder if he has lost
some of his inspiration over the course of his involvement with the
franchise due to its shift away from the racing theme. Tyler is himself
an avid car and racing enthusiast, both in real life and in the video
game realm, and whether or not you find his merging of electronica and
orchestral styles palatable, his previous two scores in the series have
at least exhibited the hyperactive enthusiasm of a composer having fun
in the creative process.
Unfortunately, while
Fast Five maintains that
same level of frenetic activity, there is an intangible loss in the kind
of attitude that gave the other two scores a sharp edge. The most
outrageous of the electronic manipulations have been toned back, but so
has the dynamic force of the orchestral side. The franchise has never
enjoyed particularly consistent thematic continuity, though there is a
set of common progressions and underlying chord shifts that Tyler
employs throughout all of these scores to join the organic/synthetic
blend as a tool for such overarching identity. The "Fast Five" summary
track contains the majority of the summarized references to the previous
scores' motifs, joined by a descending theme that repeats in "The Vault
Heist" and becomes the de facto identity of
Fast Five.
Additionally, there is the obligatory secondary theme of character
interaction for soft acoustic guitar and keyboarding (in this score,
these cues are "Paradise" and "Connection"). A bit marginalized is a
weak secondary idea for Johnson's enforcement character, defined by an
ultra-hard rhythm that repeats nearly all of its notes on key (on
electric guitar in "Hobbs" and orchestra in "Hobbs Arrives"). One of the
enduring aspects of most of Tyler's motifs for this franchise is the
tendency to either pound away on key or stray only a note or two from
that key. In the case of the aforementioned primary thematic
performances for
Fast Five, every chord is repeated in seven-note
phrases (sometimes doubled up) to emphasize the progression to the
maximum. Repeating the same chord fourteen times in a row doesn't really
suggest much intelligence in the music, regardless of how cool the
underlying rhythmic movement might be. Also flunking the intellect test
is the tired manipulation of organic performances (and synthetic, for
that matter) so that they stutter and warp obnoxiously. These techniques
are insufferable in "Remote Intel" and "What Time Do They Open?" At some
point, there might have been fuller ideas of interest in this score
before the editing process butchered them. But, alas, such things denote
"coolness" for the target audience and so it's difficult to blame Tyler
for taking that route. At least listeners are now spared the wretched
1980's video game sound effects to a greater degree. Like his two
previous scores in the series,
Fast Five has one very engaging
action cue. In this case, at almost ten minutes, "The Vault Heist"
contains substantial bravado and a better mix of the opposing styles in
the whole. As usual with Tyler, the album presentation is simply way too
long to sustain your interest; a 45-minute product would surely suffice
for this music. The composer earns his pay with this effort, but it's
weaker than the other two and very barely earns a third star. Scale back
your expectations, though, and it could compliment the franchise as
decent filler of time.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For Brian Tyler reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.32
(in 32 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.1
(in 15,328 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes a list of performers, but no extra information
about the score or film.
