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Review of Runaway Jury (Christopher Young)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you are curious to hear a blending of Christopher Young's bluesy
styles with Thomas Newman's contemporary rhythms and instrumentation.
Avoid it... if less than ten minutes of fully-charged thriller music from the full orchestra is not worth wading through lengthy atmosphere of slight rhythms.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Runaway Jury: (Christopher Young) The 2003 adaptation of yet
another John Grisham novel to the big screen, Runaway Jury took a few wrong
turns for fans of the writer. Instead of featuring a landmark court case against
big tobacco at the heart of the story, the filmmakers twisted the occupation of the
villains and aimed it at the gun industry. Even with that major change aside, the
screenplay suffered from poor choices in adaptation and resulted in a film that was
somewhat flat all the way to its overwrought end, especially when the motives and
secrets of all of the characters are revealed in artificially rapid succession.
With a truly intelligent plot cast aside, the production relied on the performances
of veterans Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman to carry its weight. It was also the
first venture into the realm of Grisham's courtroom dramas for composer Christopher
Young. Casual viewers of Grisham stories on screen probably recalled Dave Grusin's
style for the Academy Award-nominated The Firm a decade prior, and Young
doesn't stray too far from that tested formula. The film was directed by Gary
Fleder, whose films often featured the subdued work of Mark Isham. While Isham may
have succeeded in producing an adequate score for Runaway Jury, Felder went
with Young, who had proven himself arguably more versatile in urban thriller
settings. Collectors of Young's work, upon hearing his music for this venture, will
wonder immediately if he was given a template of Thomas Newman's styles within to
work, because the finished result of the composition is a piece heavy with Newman
references and a touch of Grusin and Young's own styles thrown into the mix. The
contemporary rhythms, especially within the framework of "less is more," make
Runaway Jury a very typical Newman score, especially when considering the
cyclical, somewhat off-kilter rhythmic performances of percussion and acoustic
guitar with an orchestral string section lending an occasional hand in three or
four-note bursts. To a much lesser extent, a few Grusin ideas are conveyed through
the style of the purely atmospheric sequences, and Young's thriller writing is
evident in the limited, straight forward action cues.
The opening suite of themes (though "slight motifs" is perhaps a better way to describe their development) is saturated with Thomas Newman-inspired rhythms and instrumentation, but sans the waterlogged keyboarding that often accompanies the more modern, urban variation on Newman's style. Young does two things to that basic sound to vary it just enough to create its own personality. First, he uses a bluesy swing in his piano rhythms, as well as a muted trumpet, to establish the rather seedy lack of respectability in the actions of big corporations. Secondly, with the story located in New Orleans, Young adds a lazy, but stylish female vocal to that swing of his own rhythms (introduced in earnest in "Dumb Witness") for the steamy atmosphere of the Deep South in America. Some of this variety of back-roads sound was explored in Young's Hard Rain. The opening suite establishes such a knock-off Newman sound that the score takes two or three truly frightening cues of thrilling action before Young seems to get his own style on its feet. Highlighted by "Shark Tactics," Young's orchestral turmoil and ensemble crashes provide the hair-raising edge in an aggressive way that Newman, Isham, and Grusin would likely have missed the mark. The mass of underscore in Runaway Jury consists of simple blues rhythms that take a page or two from Wonder Boys, and with this music built to exist behind the dialogue in the film, it doesn't have much to inspire a solo listen. Young's piano is always present, as usual, and he does make some nice moves to overlap acoustic and electrical guitars in these background cues. He also employs some creative percussion to help propel the rhythms (from the clanking of light metal to the wood block you heard in places like Species). But, on the whole, the opening suite, the falsely noble "Not Lady Liberty," and the two most major action pieces are the only engaging cues of interest in Runaway Jury. The concluding "Unconditional Love" offers the female vocals in a somewhat underplayed but still satisfying, mostly harmonic conclusion to the work. On album, the 60-minute running time is likely the score's worst enemy, and 25 to 30 minutes of this work could have been edited into an equally (if not more) entertaining package. Nevertheless, the score gave Young the opportunity to continue succeeding in all variants of the thriller genre. ***
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 59:37
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
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