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Review of The Replacement Killers (Harry Gregson-Williams)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if there is no limit to the amount of sampled rhythms and
sampled sound effects that you enjoy from the early days of the Media
Ventures library.
Avoid it... if you expect the memorably sorrowful theme for the primary character in the film to occupy any more than two minutes on album.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
The Replacement Killers: (Harry Gregson-Williams)
If a film were ever to be ghost-directed by John Woo, then Antoine
Fuqua's The Replacement Killers would be it. After years of
Woo-choreographed films in Hong Kong, actor Chow Yun-Fat made his
arguably successful American debut in 1998, and The Replacement
Killers was met with plenty of skepticism by American critics who
couldn't see through the blinding visual style of the production to
witness the plain fact that Yun-Fat's transition worked. Now revered
both worldwide and in the United States, the actor has gone on to far
more diplomatic and intelligent films. But The Replacement
Killers, despite all of its brutish killing and reliance on
cinematography over plot, portrays the sophisticated elegance of his
persona with ease. Parts of The Replacement Killers function
brilliantly (who can argue against his actual introduction to American
audiences at the colorful, smoky outset of the story?) while others
don't; the only reason Mira Sorvino existed in a film like this was to
make her look tough in a short skirt and boots. The story of the film is
irrelevant, but it does make clear that if you're a professional
assassin like Yun-Fat's John Lee, and you choose not to kill that son of
a cop as per your assignment, then expect a serious can of whoop-ass to
be unloaded on you and everyone you come in contact with. At least we
never see a romance between Yun-Fat and Sorvino... the film takes its
violence far too professionally for that kind of swap of bodily fluids.
The style of the picture not only compensates for rather flat acting and
a ridiculous script, but The Replacement Killers is also a prime
example of how a film floats its score, and not vice versa. Composer
Harry Gregson-Williams was still stuck in the Media Ventures rut in
1998, producing amateurish music like this and Enemy of the State
with Trevor Rabin. Even his contributions to Armageddon the same
year, despite their limited qualities, still gave no indication that
this was a composer who could someday make the waves that he has in the
2000's.
Without a doubt, The Replacement Killers was not the kind of score that would make anyone hold out hope for the Hans Zimmer pupil. It was about this time in 1998 that film music critics, worried about the midi revolution that Media Ventures was starting to cause in the action and adventure scoring genre, began to uniformly blast these largely synthetic scores. A score like The Replacement Killers represented everything ominous about where Zimmer was taking the genre, offering studios that inexpensive score thanks to the absence of payments to an orchestral ensemble. Sometimes, these scores were passable. Other times, they simply exposed themselves as cheap crap, and this was the case with The Replacement Killers. Gregson-Williams wrote a competent theme for the John Lee assassin. It is one saturated with the loneliness and sorrow of the profession, with a hint of longing and a slight ethnic edge in its performance. Some carry-overs from Zimmer's Beyond Rangoon are added for the pinch of ethnic spice needed for the character; an electric cello and flute both contribute to the solitary theme and, along with some high range percussion, these elements provide the necessary elegance to counter the overbearing bass and synthetic strings otherwise washing out the theme and, frankly, everything else in the score. The irony of this theme is that it only appears once on album, with only two minutes of its performance at the outset. After that, it's never to be heard from again. But in the film, many of the scenes of reflection and repair between Yun-Fat and Sorvino feature this theme, giving the story a fighting chance of having an actual, identifiable theme (even as understated as it is). Unfortunately, the remainder of the score is completely unorganized trash. And this doesn't make sense, especially when you have a clearly delineated theme for a character's whose persona makes the film. The relentless chase music is so generic in its use of sampled sound effects and sampled voices over sampled rhythms that there's no point in even trying to describe it. At times, it approaches the cohesion of Crimson Tide, but most of the time, its bass region is so overwhelming that speaker damage is not out of the realm of possibilities. Skip the score and watch the film.
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 36:15
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
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