Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #500
Written 2/5/05, Revised 10/10/11
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Buy it... only if you are confident with what you heard in the
film, because without reference points to the narrative, this music
could send you onto the streets looking for someone to maim.
Avoid it... if you don't care for pervasively disjointed, confused,
and poorly rendered mixing of Lisa Gerrard's voice, brutal synthetic
loops, and unnecessary sound effect samples into a score that fails to
live up to its potential.
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Gregson-
Williams |
Man on Fire: (Harry Gregson-Williams) A remake of
the 1987 Elie Chouraqui film of the same name, 2004's Man on Fire
places Denzel Washington in the role previously occupied by Scott Glenn
and shifts the location of the original A.J. Quinnell story from Italy
to Mexico. After a string of tense crime and action thrillers, director
Tony Scott updated Man on Fire with all the sensibilities of
Jerry Bruckheimer-style illogic and a super-artsy, often-blurred
cinematography that will hopefully someday soon be banned from
Hollywood. Scott had originally pushed to direct the 1987 version but
was turned down because of his inexperience. Critics weren't impressed
with the director's obsession, though if you enjoy seeing Washington's
enflamed nostrils in close-up shots and Mexico's reputation smeared in
every which way by the story, then Man on Fire will likely be
entertaining for you. The remake fared relatively well at the box
office, partly due to the fantastic performances by the lead actors, and
it spurred considerable interest in Harry Gregson-Williams' score.
Fitting a similar mould as other Gregson-Williams collaborations with
Scott, Man on Fire has all the edgy, modern urban atmospheres
that lead naturally to the rougher, more synthesized angle made
acceptable and popular by projects of the then recent past handled by
other Media Ventures or Hans Zimmer-related artists. Murders,
kidnappings, and retribution are the themes of the day, and a little of
the usual Heitor Pereira guitar music for the Latin elements is
obligatory (more influence of this tone in the score would have been
appropriate), but Gregson-Williams faced his most interesting challenge
when attempting to interpolate the harsh action motifs associated with
the vigilante pursuit of justice by Washington's bodyguard character
with the soft and tender melodic ideas for Dakota Fanning as the young
girl kidnapped. It's easy to hear that Scott, whether explicitly or
otherwise, asked Gregson-Williams to pump up the testosterone level for
Man on Fire to levels exceeding even the techno-thriller Enemy
of the State, for the cues driven by synthetic loops are brutal in
their volume and intent. If you throw in the use of several Latin source
songs, a little more non-English, new-age work from the ever-popular
Lisa Gerrard, some score contributions from other composers, and, as
previously mentioned, the softer character themes for restrained strings
and piano, then you get the potential for one very muddy end product.
And mud is what you get.
Perhaps Gregson-Williams would have been successful
with his conceptual structures for
Man on Fire had he been able
to play to lesser extremes at both the action and character ends of the
spectrum. The largely synthetic action cues truly degrade from the
overall product, stuttering and ripping without any consistent rhythm
through several lengthy passages and utilizing some of the nastiest
samples and manipulation techniques available. While it is functional
music for a man with revenge on his mind, its inconsistencies on album
make the approach very difficult to swallow, certainly not aided by
Gregson-Williams' need, for some reason, to insert random tapping,
clanging, and distorted vocal sound effects that have been so altered by
a computer that the end result is frightfully disconnecting. Some of
this music, like "The Rave," is understandable as quasi-source material.
Placing the soft cues for the girl and her bodyguard in their
contemplative moments serves to accentuate this disjointed issue with
polarity; the character cues are pretty and, in some cases (as in "You
Are Her Father"), evocative, but they are also often very short, most of
them hovering around a minute in length. With the action cues including
sudden jolts of crashing samples and vague orchestral force, echoing
through the soundscape in trademark Zimmer/Media Ventures fashion, you
can't help but tread through the softer moments with a sense of caution.
The Latin source material is consistent within itself, as is Lisa
Gerrard's contribution. As phenomena go, Gerrard was on her own planet
since
Gladiator, and her vocal style didn't seem to vary much
from score to score thereafter. Some nearly identical progressions in
her part of "The End" will be distracting for all but the most ardent
Gladiator fans. For
Man on Fire, however, her usually
smooth voice has been digitally altered so she sounds as though she's
two octaves higher and split into two people; the overlay is grating on
the nerves, and her usual slurring of notes only worsens the mixing.
Still, her co-written, nine-minute cue is, far more than
Gregson-Williams' solo efforts here, the reason for much of the interest
in this score, so perhaps it is not surprising to hear a radio edit of
Gerrard's performances with a rather tepid and uninteresting drum loop
at the very end of the CD album. This track was initially not available
on the download-only version of the album, though a few extra score
tracks were. On the whole,
Man on Fire has several worthy ideas
and occasional potential, but the overall package is disjointed,
confused, and suffers from poorly rendered mixings of Gerrard's voice
and totally unnecessary sound effect sampling by Gregson-Williams. Seek
it only if you are confident with what you heard in the film.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
Bias Check:
For Harry Gregson-Williams reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3
(in 40 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 2.99
(in 55,268 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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