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Review of Sneakers (James Horner)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you desire James Horner's friendliest scores, one that
won't overwhelm you with its themes or performances but exudes an
affable, propulsive charisma lacking in most of his dramatic works.
Avoid it... if Horner's wonderfully light, jazzy mode in this score cannot compensate for tired suspense material that references or foreshadows numerous other scores by the composer.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Sneakers: (James Horner) Touted as one of the first
mainstream technology capers from the digital age of Hollywood, Phil
Alden Robinson's 1992 film Sneakers 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 Field
of Dreams 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 (Thunderheart) and some arguable disappointments
(Patriot Games) for fans who were accustomed to his grand styles
of the late 1980's. In both quality and style, Sneakers 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. ****
TRACK LISTINGS:
1992 Columbia Album:
Total Time: 48:27
2023 La-La Land Album: Total Time: 131:46
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert of the 1992 Columbia album includes minimal credits
and no extra information about the film or score. There are no track
listings provided on the exterior of the product. The 2023 La-La Land
album contains extensive information about the film and score.
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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 Sneakers are Copyright © 1992, 2023, Columbia Records, La-La Land Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 9/24/96 and last updated 4/23/24. |
