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Review of Man on Fire (Harry Gregson-Williams)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
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.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
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. **
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 64:54
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
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