The Rip: (Clinton Shorter) Based on a true story of
suspected police corruption in South Florida, the 2026 thriller
The
Rip captured bored January audiences on Netflix while reuniting lead
actors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck once again. They are members of a
Miami-Dade County police department investigating the death of a captain
in its tactical narcotics unit who was attempting to root out
unsanctioned police actions to steal drug money from the homes in which
gangs store it. The remaining leadership on the team busts a house with
$20 million hidden in its attic, but after shootouts, fire, and a whole
lot of angry banter back and forth, the villains could very well be the
police themselves rather than the gang members in the area. Expect to
ultimately see a test of character and loyalty, with the required action
bursts meant to misdirect audiences along the way. The project did give
Damon and Affleck the opportunity to compete with each other in the
arena of gnarly, overgrown beards, and that alone probably helped the
expensive production recoup its costs. Producer and director Joe
Carnahan is a veteran of such gunplay between angry men on screen, and
in the 2020's, his go-to composer has become Clinton Shorter, who has
spent much of his career toiling in television series since his breakout
film score for 2009's
District 9. His association with Carnahan
has afforded him the opportunity to return to films after a long break,
though none of these assignments is particularly glamourous or
memorable. For
The Rip, Shorter's approach to the story is
appropriately grim from start to finish, with only moderate relief at
the end. It's somewhat angry in parts, but the personality is mostly
just gloomy. The composer doesn't generate much genuine excitement from
the action portions, the intensity simply ramped up for these passages.
As expected in the genre, there is an excess of droning on key, and many
of its structures begin and end on key as well; this is a common
technique to denote finality, but it robs some suspense from the
environment. Shorter's instrumentation includes string and brass tones,
though much of the ambience is synthetic. The guitar and electronics
range widely in the era of their inflection, some dating back to the
1980's while others are more commonly rooted in already-tired 2020's
grinding and manipulation. Most of it yields conventional industrial
effects with percussion blended within for typically abrasive
rambling.
For listeners hoping to hear some compelling
translation of the harsher electronic shades into an orchestral presence
as heard in
District 9, you do receive occasional hints of that
technique, highlighted by the deep brass posturing that provides more
muscle in "They Got Me." Also at play are very vague, choral-like tones
in "Money" to suggest some Hollywood emphasis of discovery. Still, the
narrative is largely nonexistent in the music even though there is a
definite overall crescendo in the final third. That last act culminates
in a pair of cues ("How Much You Got?" and "Money") with increased tonal
gravity for the revelations. The central thematic core of
The Rip
consists of ascending series of string notes over pulsating synthetic
rhythms, the melody eventually descending at its end to release some
tension. This main theme is heard at 2:15 into "The RIP" against rampant
percussive and synthetic effects that obscure its progressions, though
the longer ascent of greater importance debuts at 2:52. The strings
continue the ascending figure in the middle of "Okay Buddy" with more
ominous tones, their presence twisted into a different vehicle of
character contemplation in "Tattoos." Slurred pitches augment the
suspense of the idea in "Everything" while it unsuccessfully attempts a
more organic presence in "Price of a Police Captain." The theme matures
in the latter half of "How Much You Got?" for a tonal highlight, and
that mode continues in "Money" with more compelling drama and the
aforementioned hints of synth choir. A softer variant without the looped
synthetics provides closure late in "To the Dollar." For its resolution,
the idea inverts to a downward motion in "The Last Thing" before
attempting a minimally hopeful end. The synths here are more pleasantly
programmed but still restrained in their cold tones, and that technique
also informs the softly keyboarded "Right Here" with some brass gravity
before the score simply recedes from the scene without any notice. In
the end, there's nothing offensive overall in the score for
The
Rip, mostly because it's exactly the kind of music a movie such as
this deserves and can function with. While casual listeners only
familiar with Shorter's work from
District 9 will hear a few
resemblances from that popular score, this entry doesn't attempt any
dose of the same memorability. That said, the sequence from "How Much
You Got?" forward definitely saves the listening experience as a whole
from totally mundane mediocrity, though even this ten or so minutes of
material may not justify an otherwise routine trip to the darker corners
of ambient dread.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
There exists no official packaging for this album.
