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| Morricone |
In the Line of Fire: (Ennio Morricone) One of the
most acclaimed and popular movies of 1993,
In the Line of Fire
also happened to cast Clint Eastwood in a leading for the final time in
a film that he did not himself direct. Several years of development went
into a collaboration with the American Secret Service to research the
inspiration for this film, the sole, still active agent who was serving
on the day that President Kennedy was assassinated. The premise of
In
the Line of Fire details the emotional trauma of that this agent
(Eastwood) still suffers on the job in the early 1990's, and when a
former government operative decides to assassinate the current
president, he plays a tormenting cat and mouse game with the agent. The
role offered Eastwood another chance to play a tough guy from a previous
generation turned vulnerable and fallible in his old age, suffering a
number of setbacks in this film until one physical confrontation with
the villain at the end. That assassin is played by none other than John
Malkovich in a signature role, and Rene Russo is a fellow agent who
provides some "love interest" material with whom Eastwood can
contemplate his failings. A smart script and creative editing (which
required the digital manipulation of 1992 presidential election footage
and old 1960's movie scenes to show Eastwood's younger self with
Kennedy) landed
In the Line of Fire a number of Academy Award
nominations. For the film's music, legendary composer Ennio Morricone
used the opportunity to continue his push into mainstream American
assignments at the time. Such ventures in the latter decades of his
career weren't always successful, and
In the Line of Fire stands
high among his more curious failures. Director Wolfgang Petersen has
always been known for rotating wildly between composers from project to
project, and perhaps Morricone was a poor match for this movie in
particular. The composer's approach to the 1993 film was surprisingly
outdated the moment it was recorded, seemingly trying to place the
setting of
In the Line of Fire in the 1970's. The score is an odd
blend of Bill Conti's vintage contemporary merging of pop
instrumentation and rhythms with orchestral backing on one hand and
David Shire's challenging, post-modern techniques of symphonic
minimalism and dissonant edginess from that same earlier period on the
other. Add a somewhat misplaced dose of Morricone's European romanticism
and you have a work that is distracting in the film despite generating
most of the basic suspense necessitated by the story.
Had
In the Line of Fire existed fifteen years
prior, Morricone's score would likely have been en vogue and praised as
edgy and gripping. Loyalists to the composer will probably extend that
opinion to the score's 1993 home anyway. But Petersen had worked with
Alan Silvestri and James Newton Howard in that general time period and
either one of those composer would likely have written a score that
didn't draw so much attention to itself. The score's title track on
album, "In the Line of Fire," features trumpet solos (in a fugue
formation, interestingly) that are reminiscent of
Red Sonja, as
are the contemporary beats underneath. The melodic line in this cue gets
completely lost with the swirling accents on trumpets, unfortunately.
The themes in
In the Line of Fire are rather obtuse, outside of
the idea of light romance in the numerous "Lilly and Frank" cues.
Perhaps it should not be a surprise that these tracks are terribly
redundant and feature no narrative development (given that they all have
the same name), though Morricone enthusiasts will certainly enjoy the
varied woodwind performances that flow smoothly between them. The pan
pipe holdovers from
The Mission in the first of these tracks on
album are a strange choice and an unnecessary distraction. The villain
receives the purely Shire-like theme of sparse dread, with strings often
meandering above uncertain woodwind and piano lines that rarely
compliment each other. The chase and other action sequences throw in
drum pads and other rhythmic devices in unusual layers, creating tension
by their unpleasant tone rather than engaging emotional pull. The
absence of finesse in a stomping cue such as "Solving the Puzzle" is
nearly intolerable. The percussion really becomes obnoxious by "Arriving
in L.A.," sometimes not matching the meter of the other lines. The
infusion of electronics, though rare, is painfully out of place,
especially in the second "Arriving in L.A." cue (the track titles on
album are clearly problematic). Perhaps most importantly, there is
nothing presidential about Morricone's tone for the score; since so much
of the film's foundation is built upon the mystique of the Presidential
Protective Detail, it's surprising that Morricone did not manipulate
more patriotic echoes into his work. The album presentation of
In the
Line of Fire is a disaster that doesn't do the score any favors,
with poor track titles, no chronological order, and a very
unsatisfactory recording that throws every instrument to the forefront
of the mix. This last point is the killer, because not only is the
composition out of date, but the dull, lifeless recording exacerbates
this condition two-fold. Ultimately, this solid film deserved a score
with more conventional drama and narrative cohesion than the awkwardly
retro tone that Morricone provided.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For Ennio Morricone reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.18
(in 11 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.29
(in 10,058 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
