| CLOSE WINDOW |
|
FILMTRACKS.COM
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of The One (Trevor Rabin)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
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.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
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. ***
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 42:16
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes a list of performers, but no other information about
the score or film.
Copyright ©
2003-2024, Filmtracks Publications. All rights reserved.
The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from The One are Copyright © 2001, Varèse Sarabande and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 3/27/03 and last updated 2/11/09. |
