Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #1,374
Written 3/29/14
Invert Colors
Buy it... if five to ten minutes of melodic material typical to
Patrick Doyle's past is a substantial enough attraction to justify an
otherwise workmanlike regurgitation of electronic techno-thriller tones
founded by other composers.
Avoid it... if you expect the entertaining themes of this score to
be adapted effectively into the remainder, the long suspense and chase
sequences basically sufficient but mundane and anonymous.
 |
| Doyle |
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit: (Patrick Doyle) For most
of the 2000's, Paramount tried to resurrect the dormant Jack Ryan
franchise that had run from The Hunt for Red October in 1990 to
The Sum of All Fears in 2002. The fiscal juggernaut of a
franchise had always followed the Tom Clancy novels from which the main
character was devised, though at the time of Clancy's coincidental death
late 2013, the studio was putting the finishing touches on the first
film adaptation of the character not to be based upon one of the
author's works. For 2014's delayed and somewhat maligned Jack Ryan:
Shadow Recruit, the story is fresh despite maintaining the basic
elements of any Ryan plot: government agencies, conspiracies, terrorism,
and technological advancement. Taking over as Ryan is "Star Trek"
captain Chris Pine, his mentor signed for this film and its successor
being Kevin Costner. After Kenneth Branagh came onto the project late to
direct, he was also cast as the film's villain, proving between this
role, the one in Wild Wild West, and everything in between, that
he'll try any ethnic twist as long as he's able to chew up the scenery.
The story involves the Branagh character as a Russian tycoon interested
in manipulating markets to plunge America into fiscal disaster, though
you can be sure that there's a terrorist bomb and a city chase involved
at the climax. With Branagh into the production came composer Patrick
Doyle, his longtime musical collaborator and friend. The assignment of
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit occupied the better part of a year for
Doyle, who has stated that the process of creating the musical tone for
the film was one of artistic liberty largely free of some of the
industry's usual meddling and time constraints. Doyle and Branagh agreed
early that the topic required electronically-leaning music, though with
Doyle you can always expect at least some role for traditional
instrumentation. The composer had already begun a career transformation
in the blockbusters Thor and Rise of the Planet of the
Apes, both projects requiring the him to adapt his style to meet the
expectations of an industry in the 2010's that demands certain
bass-heavy, rhythmic musical elements in its scores. This evolution for
Doyle is complete in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, a work that still
contains underutilized glimpses of Doyle's melodic sensibilities but
could very easily be considered a wholesale interpretation of John
Powell's extensive development of this genre of music in the
2000's.
The risk to Doyle in a situation such as
Jack Ryan:
Shadow Recruit is the substantial abandonment of his own
compositional style, and, until the very end of the picture, he indeed
loses his trademark Doyle sound in this score. His creation process
included the sampling of stereotypical Russian instrumental tones and
the manipulation of that material into an environment of rather
stale-sounding rhythmic loops from percussion and electronics. A fair
number of the rhythmic cues in this work contain some orchestral
backing, "The Lightbulb" among the few to really combine string layers
and brass over the synthetics to solid effect. Outside of a few featured
ensemble moments, the London Symphony Orchestra is largely wasted in
this score, a small Hollywood studio group more than capable of fitting
into this kind of background role. The ambient electronic tinkering of
the score's first half yields to the typical string ostinato suspense
and chase mode common to Powell's methodology later. At times, the
samples stray towards David Arnold's occasional abrasiveness, but while
Doyle claims to have engineered many of these sounds within his crew,
the result is predictable and tiresome. When confronted by a solid mass
of this generic music, listeners (especially aggrieved longtime Doyle
collectors) will seek out the more original and recognizably classical
moments in the score. One clear moment of distinction is the choral
"Faith of Our Fathers" piece that Doyle uses to introduce Branagh's
villain and close out the end credits. Almost humorously, this somewhat
distractingly organic cue is reminiscent of Basil Poledouris'
Red
October hymn. Another secondary motif in the score struggles to find
its identity is the work's softer character theme, emoting minimally in
"Shadow Accounts," "The Activation," and "Picking This Life." The main
theme for the film is easily the score's highlight, a muscular idea with
a primary phrase that strangely shares chord progressions with Jerry
Goldsmith's
First Blood theme. This theme's suite-like
arrangement in "Ryan, Mr. President" is the score's only traditional
Doyle moment, the wildly enthusiastic violin and trumpet lines of the
last minute astonishingly recalling
Much Ado About Nothing.
Unfortunately, this outstanding performance, building out of Remote
Control-friendly low strings and snare tones, doesn't really inform much
of the remainder of the score, utilized effectively only at the ends of
the ominous "Second Great Depression" and relieving "Jack and
Aleksandr." Absent this theme and the one for the villain for most of
its length, the score for
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit is
disappointingly anonymous despite housing those five to ten minutes of
solid highlights.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
Bias Check:
For Patrick Doyle reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.84
(in 32 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.45
(in 26,393 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
