Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #700
Written 3/27/03, Revised 2/11/09
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Buy it... if you want to hear Trevor Rabin's style of music in its proper
element, with a variety of rip-snorting electric guitars and better than average
rock rhythms serving as appropriate ambience for the film's combination of science
fiction and martial arts.
Avoid it... if Rabin's hard-nosed ruckus hasn't worked for you in any context,
or if you are simply looking for the songs from the film.
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| Rabin |
The One: (Trevor Rabin) Why do people keep going to glorified
kung fu movies starring Jet Li, even at his advancing age? Because, as evidence to
what some people would call the spiraling decay of human morality, they love to see
the martial arts expert kick ass. The same applies to Jackie Chan, but with Jet Li,
you get a sense of sophisticated malice that serves to entertain the malevolent
corners of all our personalities. And what better than to witness a movie in which
Li not only kicks bystanders in the head, but himself as well? The concept of
The One is a unique one, both in its theories about multiple universes and
in its brilliant scheme to place multiple Li copies in every scene of the film,
culminating the best motorcycle-busting, skull-smashing Jet Li experience of them
all. There are existential elements to the story, too, the kinds of topics that
deserve treatment in a far more intellectual setting, but that's obviously not the
venue here. Proven rock composer Trevor Rabin was hired for the project with the
anticipation of a heavy touch of electric guitars for Li's ruthless killing on
screen. Coming off of several high profile scores involving the interpolation of
orchestral and rock band elements, Rabin's fast-paced, authentic, contemporary edge
was a sound perfect for The One. He assembled a rock band with the string
section of an orchestra and his usual array of synthesizers and editing tools,
resulting in a score that Rabin's most ardent fans will be more inclined to enjoy
than those who discovered his talents with the orchestral majesty of portions of
Armageddon and Deep Blue Sea. Still, something must be said for a man
in his element. Rabin's large orchestral scores are often so simplistic in
construct and heavy in the mixing process (causing those works to sound mostly
synthetic even when they are not) that they insult the intelligence of veteran film
music collectors (the asinine American Outlaws is perhaps the greatest
violator among this group). But for every composer there is a perfect cinematic
match, and you have to give Rabin credit for providing exactly the kind of
propulsive, electronic score that The One required. Whether or not you can
tolerate it is another matter.
The most immediately interesting aspect of
The One is that
many of Rabin's lengthy action sequences are not only viable in context, but easily
listenable as well. His collectors, in fact, are likely to indulge themselves in
this material frequently. As best heard in the first three cues of the album
release, Rabin's romping rock blasts, while surely more intense than anything that
orchestral film score collectors are typically accustomed to hearing, are
consistently harmonic and lacking in the completely uncontrolled wildness that
often plagues such outbursts of propulsive electronic rhythms. The highlights of
the album's presentation are the opening and concluding cues with this type of
material. There are more difficult passages elsewhere in the score, as heard mostly
in the second half of the album, when Rabin's music loses cohesion and the guitars
fail to perform workable motifs and the rhythms become frantically disjointed. The
same difficulty applies to the mix of the string orchestra; when the section
attempts to develop motifs in the latter half of the score, they are often
interrupted by torturous blasts of unforgiving metal. It's possible that Rabin was
attempting to build upon the general theme of "good versus evil" by alternating
violently between these two styles, justifying why the orchestral elements are
consistently hacked to an abbreviation. By the end of the story, you basically have
one good Jet Li and one evil Jet Li battling each another to the death, and Rabin
missed an opportunity to clearly establish different instrumental or thematic
motifs for the two sides despite some hints that this may have been his intent.
But, in any case, Rabin does offer up several ass-kicking guitar performances with
decent rock rhythms, including the hip cue "Multiverse," which features a deep
guitar the likes of which Ry Cooder used with cool style in
Last Man
Standing. Overall,
The One is an improvement over Rabin's frustrating
work for
American Outlaws of the same year, and while his score for
The
One could probably have made a better attempt at addressing the duality for the
two sides of the battle, the music is certainly functional. Mainstream fans of the
film should be aware that no songs appear on this album. The score still won't
tickle the fancy of orchestral film music fans, but it's not one to dread either.
Every sound has its proper home, and
The One is a very good match for
Rabin's style of music.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
Bias Check:
For Trevor Rabin reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.5
(in 12 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 2.63
(in 13,621 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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