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•	2023 Album

While the ingredients of the score for Hammett are outstanding and the performance inflection from the piano and clarinet are superb, Barry's narrative struggles to present themes that evolve or adapt to new situations, which is the score's main detriment. While the main theme is a fantastic highlight in the composer's career, it never really experiences any distinctive development outside of its base form, the full ensemble never taking it to satisfying heights. That theme is a bluesy and elegant noir identity for the piano and clarinet that can be heard in very different ways on the score's two CD albums because of their highly disparate mix. Regardless of which mix you prefer, the theme is one of the composer's most attractive career ideas not involving an orchestra. The duet occupies "Hammett (Main Titles)" with high style, the mix absolutely engrossing on the later album and highlighting the excellent improvised flourishes of the piano. This mode continues on piano alone in the first minute of "Hammett's Dream," wafts gently out of the suspense material at 1:26 into "Chinatown Incident," and shines on the clarinet over the piano in "Hammett Meets Salt/Suicide is Fascinating." The main theme is slowed for another piano and clarinet duet in "Hide and Seek," and Barry experiments with different lines from the piano in this cue, upshifting the tempo nicely for a moment. This cue more than any other really differs between the album mixes, the earlier one emphasizing the performance inflection of the clarinet with far more clarity but losing most of the noir reverb effect. The theme emerges in its duet from string suspense in "A Cool Million" and finally adds the strings to the clarinet and piano in "The Wrap Up," the piano nicely improvising again on the tune at the end of the cue. Another, longer variation of the main title performance proceeds in "Hammett (End Credits)," and the longer album throws a similar alternate take onto its end as a bonus. Far less engrossing are the two secondary themes for the darker portions of the story. The villain's theme is a cyclical melody for strings that can never seem to escape itself, adequate but rarely very imposing. This theme is set against suspenseful sustains on strings at 1:12 into "Hammett's Dream," becomes more focused on piano over the same string haze at 0:09 into "Shadow Man," and is accelerated over heightened string rhythms in "Escape From Fong's." The piano offers the idea tentatively at the outset of "The Numbers Ticket Clue" and continues in the same rendition during "You Can't Forget Her Ever."

In later cues, the villain's theme stomps with more menace from the piano in "Don't Be a Chump, Let Her Go," moves back to violins without much variation in "Waterfront Rendezvous," and interrupts the smooth finale at 3:08 into "The Wrap Up" for one last reminder. The concurrently developed suspense theme is a more alluring and mysterious version of the motions from the villain theme, previewed amongst the contributing Chinese percussion in "Ryan is Missing." It's more clearly set against that percussion at 0:39 into "Chinatown Incident" and slight but effective from low flute during the latter half of "The Library." That flute once again carries that same material in "A Belly Full of Daylight," and the theme slowly plods through the start of "The Wrap Up" on low piano. Few listeners will return to the albums representing Hammett for these secondary themes of sparsely effective darkness. The main theme for the titular character and the city is where this music shines. In all its variants, you could assemble more than a dozen minutes of this theme's gorgeous blues to include on a collection of Barry's slower jazz for extremely easy listening. While this music never really achieves any catharsis outside of its occasional piano improvisations, it's still a clear winner in the composer's career. The rest of the score and the source music are comparatively drab, however. As mentioned before, the score's two CD albums offer strikingly different mixes of the piano and clarinet. A limited 2000 Prometheus Records album combined 25 minutes of the score with much of Barry's source material, and this presentation is extremely dry in the mix, pulling the clarinet further forward to emphasize it over the piano. The score also sounds closer to its age on this product. A 2023 commercial expansion from Silva Screen offers an entirely different mix, both the piano and clarinet afforded a wet ambience and the former given center stage. Some of the subtleties of the clarinet performances are thus buried, but the instrument is provided a sultrier presence akin to a saxophone. The gain levels are much higher overall on the 2023 product, the experience jumping out of the speakers and sounding much more contemporary with digital recordings. In a perfect world, the clarinet would have received the enhanced reverb but be placed a little further forward. Also to its benefit, the 2023 presentation adds another twelve minutes of score, including a few more performances of the main theme, which alone merit the album. The noir portions of the score represent Barry at his most appealingly stylish, and it's a sound he wouldn't explore often later in his career.   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

• Music as Written for the Film:  ****
• Music as Heard on the 2000 Prometheus Album:  ***
• Music as Heard on the 2023 Silva Screen Album:  ****
• Overall:  ****

Bias Check:

For John Barry reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.6 (in 40 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.33 (in 30,543 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.