: (James Horner) Touted as one of the first
mainstream technology capers from the digital age of Hollywood, Phil
Alden Robinson's 1992 film
fell victim to its own
self-confidence. Press kits for the film were the first ever to be
issued on computer media, and the studio placed all its eggs in the
basket of a stellar cast that ended up chewing on a screenplay that
didn't live up to the concept's potential. Still, the concept remains
salient decades later, lending the movie some credible cult status.
Robert Redford leads a group of industrial espionage experts on a
mission of securing a universal code breaker, but their intentions are
sometimes mysterious. The quickly paced thriller offered classy, urban
suspense and charm, balancing the hard edge of the technology with a
sense of humor. The role of sound is particularly vital in the movie, a
blind character saving the say using his excellent sense of hearing. The
director sought a minimalistic, cyclical score akin to modern classicism
to accompany the movement of the tale, and he returned to his
collaborator, James Horner, for the task. The composer
used the occasion to write one of his lesser sleeper hits, a score that
has managed to endure better than many others of the era. Horner was at
a point in his career when he produced several blockbuster scores that,
despite immense popularity, had gained him little praise from critics
and his peers. The years 1992 and 1993 were a time when the composer
produced introverted scores more often than not; it was music that
followed a philosophy of less-is-more that led to some arguable
successes (
) for fans who were accustomed to his grand styles
of the late 1980's. In both quality and style,
fell
somewhere in the middle. It didn't re-use substantial portions of
Horner's other works, and it instead introduced a few new techniques
that would definitely inform some of his blockbuster hits later in the
decade. Along with the prerequisite Philip Glass style that had been
temped into the film by the director, the score also took a few pages
from the styles of Elmer Bernstein, Jerry Goldsmith, and Danny Elfman,
but, in the end, it still represented the breaking of new ground for
Horner.
What Horner produced for
Sneakers turned out to be
a lighter and arguably snazzier, less tense version of Goldsmith's
The Russia House, with Branford Marsalis once again providing
attractive solos on the saxophone. Marsalis was advertised with his
picture right on front of the score album's cover (along with the cast,
strangely enough), however his role in the score isn't much more than
one of secondary accompaniment. He brings life to Horner's simple
sixteenth-note themes with his crisp, stylish performances, however, and
aids in the upbeat memorability of the score long after the film has
faded away. The bulk of the score is performed by handful of soloists on
synthesizers, Marsalis, select members of the orchestra, and an outsized
role for piano. The brass section is particularly restrained or outright
absent, replaced by a bevy of mallet-oriented percussion and tapping
cymbals. The only jarring breaks in the listening experience come from
crashing pianos akin to
The Pelican Brief and timpani pounding to
mark changes of location in the film. Thematically, Horner explores two
or three themes in the score, but those for the protagonists tend to
bleed together, with familiar progressions always rounding out the work.
A theme of lamentation and regret opens "Main Title" and serves as a de
facto suspense motif that doubles for the quasi-villain of the story.
This material is surprisingly elegant in its employment of female voices
and saxophone, the latter conveying a variation on the composer's famous
"four-note motif of evil" from
Willow and proving itself a
versatile tool throughout the score. The composer introduces a
key-shifting rhythm at the 2:00 mark into "Main Title" and reprised in
"Too Many Secrets" that he must have held in high esteem, because he
would eventually tap its distinct rhythms and progressions for several
of his scores over the rest of the decade, serving as the eventual basis
for the standout piano-oriented cues in
Bicentennial Man and
A
Beautiful Mind, and extending the
Sneakers vocals prominently
in the latter. In this theme of sadness, the whimsical, playful female
choir, in conjunction with a descending string figure reprised to a
greater degree in "Cosmo... Old Friend," reminded listeners of Elfman's
styles of the era. The director reportedly didn't care for the use of
the voices in this theme, and the culmination of this idea in "Cosmo's
Monologue" was largely dialed out in the film.
The actual main theme of
Sneakers offers the sax
performances in their best light, previewed solo in "Jeremy
Subharmonics" and entering the film in all its riff-oriented glory in
"Bank Penetration." This exuberantly descending series of paired notes
is highly attractive and offers Marsalis his best moments of inflective
potential. The theme's rollicking sense of fun continues in "How Much Do
You Want?," "Janek's Office" and "Planning the Sneak," achieving a bit
more gravitas in the latter cue but never losing its fleetingly nimble
demeanor. Horner provides this idea in two extended arrangements, first
in the album-targeted "The Sneakers Theme" and then in the extended end
credits piece, "...And the Blind Shall See." Whereas the lamentation
theme sets the mood of this score's greater ambience, the main theme for
the protagonists as a group is where its butt-wiggling attraction lies,
and the two function well enough together. A third theme is afforded to
the villain portrayed by Ben Kingsley, taking the descending string
figure from the lamentation idea and creating its own disillusioned
version from a different perspective. Consolidating in "Cosmo...Old
Friend," this idea continues through its demise in "Goodbye." Don't
expect this idea to last long in memory, though it is generally
effective at its basic duties. A fourth theme in
Sneakers doesn't
have an impact until the story's climax, but it's an overwhelming
influence once it arrives. Expressed with immense enthusiasm and
optimism from the full ensemble (including overdue assistance from low
brass) in "The Escape/Whistler's Rescue," this theme contains all the
chime-banging, snare-ripping, and flute-flailing aspects of Horner's
most soaring children's genre adventure themes, a tambourine carrying
over from
The Rocketeer to set the pace during the climax. Hints
of
The Mask of Zorro even appear at the end of this outstanding
cue, and to ensure that this idea doesn't go completely orphaned in the
score, Horner provides additional development for it from the whole
ensemble in the middle of the "...And the Blind Shall See" suite. Even
if listeners don't care for the more uniquely stylish, quieter passages
in
Sneakers or the abundance of conspiracy-related material of
suspense for crashing piano chords in the score, this adventure theme at
the end is a superb salvation in and of itself. Together, these four
themes collectively form a very strong narrative identity for the story
even if the director didn't always include key cues in the final mix of
the film.
Aside from the outward thematic passages, the
instrumental usage in
Sneakers is laden with comfortably familiar
but not always redundant moments of interest. The action music in the
work is informed by
Brainstorm in the handling of brass in "Too
Many Secrets" and would itself inform both
Apollo 13 and
Titanic in the piano and percussion techniques of "Playtronics
Break-In." The piano's role in the score, often mirrored by synthesizer
lines, is also quite enjoyable. Its delicate introductions in "Too Many
Secrets" and "The Sneakers Theme" are direct precursors of
The
Spitfire Grill and others, and they create an ambience of
technological magic that functions well in context. For Horner
collectors not deterred by the composer's self-loyalty,
Sneakers
remains an affable and alluring experience, assuming that most listeners
will omit the straight suspense and darker action music from the
listening experience. A solid chunk of the score's middle toils in this
bleak suspense mode from Horner, and these cues can be very hard to
digest. The original album presentation for
Sneakers completely
rearranged the middle of the score so that this fuller narrative was
lost, but Horner did a fairly good job of editing the best parts of
several individual cues into longer ones for that product. A 2023
limited expansion on a 2-CD set from La-La Land Records restores the
proper ordering of cues and includes several worthy new inclusions
ranging across all of the themes aside from the adventure one. Of
particular interest are the alternate takes after the prior album's
presentation on the second disc; this version of "The Sneakers Theme"
unleashes Marsalis with improvisation similar to his memorable
performance in the end credits cue for
The Russia House. This
excellent rendition may alone be worth the expanded product. The
suspense portions are fleshed out to a greater degree in the dark
underbelly of the score's midsection, however, so be prepared to skip
more of that material as necessary. Horner detractors will find little
new to appreciate, but the trick to enjoying
Sneakers is
remembering that in 1992, many of the ideas explored here were largely
new. The score was therefore a refreshing entry in Horner's continuously
expanding career, and it contains a few tracks that are absolute
necessities on any significant compilation of the composer's most
compelling themes. While the score as a whole may not be the classic
that some Horner loyalists believe it to be,
Sneakers is
comparatively original and highly entertaining, easily meriting the
longer album presentation.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
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