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Review of In the Line of Fire (Ennio Morricone)

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... for the ten minutes of the pretty, woodwind-performed theme of romance sprinkled throughout this otherwise challenging listening experience.

Avoid it... if Ennio Morricone's distinctly retro approach to handling the suspense of this story, with awkward 1970's techniques and instrumentation throughout, sounds strangely dysfunctional to you in this Digital Age context.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

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.  **

TRACK LISTINGS:

Total Time: 63:26

• 1. In the Line of Fire (2:19) • 2. Lilly and Frank (4:02) • 3. "Aim High" (4:21) • 4. The Boat (2:10) • 5. Leary's Shrine (2:05) • 6. On the Rooftops (4:27) • 7. Discovery in Phoenix (2:59) • 8. Lilly and Frank (2:29) • 9. Frank is Depressed (2:39) • 10. Arriving in L.A. (2:39) • 11. Lilly and Frank (1:49) • 12. Telephone Call (3:31)

• 13. Dinner Date (2:01) • 14. Frank (1:35) • 15. Solving the Puzzle (1:45) • 16. Another Telephone Call (4:05) • 17. Dallas Recalled (3:08) • 18. In the Park (2:09) • 19. Taking the Bullet (2:38) • 20. Arriving in L.A. (1:56) • 21. Lilly and Frank (1:32) • 22. Collage (5:18) • 23. On the Trail (1:50)

NOTES & QUOTES:

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

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