 |
| Jablonsky |
Spenser Confidential: (Steve Jablonsky) The
collaboration between director Peter Berg and actor Mark Wahlberg
continues in 2020's buddy cop comedy action flick,
Spenser
Confidential, with Wahlberg once again producing the project as a
vehicle for his tough-guy self. There's really nothing new to see in
this fourth-generation knock-off of the
Lethal Weapon concept,
Wahlberg is a police detective who spends five years in prison for
assaulting his corrupt boss and then busting the crime ring that boss
and his own partner are associated with upon his release. It's a whole
lot of chasing, posturing, shoving people against walls, ramming cars
into other cars, and talking in colorful language about drug deals. The
story was inspired by Ace Atkins' 2013 novel, "Robert B. Parker's
Wonderland," but doesn't actually follow much of its narrative, and
critics weren't impressed. But the film was dumped on Netflix at the
start of the 2020 pandemic lockdowns, so it became one of the year's
more widely viewed diversions. Berg collaborated with composer Steve
Jablonsky on
Deepwater Horizon,
Lone Survivor, and
Battleship prior, so it's no surprise that similarly synthetic
music was asked of the Remote Control spin-off for
Spenser
Confidential. Jablonsky is not known for the most thoughtful,
high-quality music in Hollywood, his scores often basically functional
and little more. In the case of the movies made by Berg, much of this
body of work is truly awful,
Deepwater Horizon and
Battleship containing particularly hideous electronic "music"
that has become the subject of endless jokes in the film music
community. The composer's approach to
Spenser Confidential isn't
much more substantial, the basic ingredients all the same. Jablonsky
infuses absolutely zero style to address the comedic portions of the
work, nor does he supply any character to the music to acknowledge the
Boston setting. Instead, he rummages through his library of sampled
electronic sounds and loops them endlessly under occasional guitars,
bass, Hammond organ, or keyboards that do little to enunciate anything
important relating to the story. The score for
Spenser
Confidential is, in short, the kind of music you'd expect a computer
to generate if you instructed it to provide the most conservatively
generic contemporary thriller music possible. The result would be
neither unique nor smart, making one wonder how much a guy like
Jablonsky is paid to arrange sampled sounds in loops for a living.
The music for
Spenser Confidential isn't
terrible because it's insufferable for much of its length, though it
does have really grating action portions starting in "Tracksuit
Charlie," becoming more insipidly manipulated by the obnoxious "The Pony
Express." Rather, the score is a dreadful bore, neither funny nor
exciting. So much of it is just looped droning that you latch on to any
character from it that happens to briefly emerge. There is a main theme
for Spenser (Wahlberg), "Spencer's Theme" (yes, it's misspelled) finally
fleshing out the theme fully with electric guitar at the end; Jablonsky
nicely reduces the theme down to noir-like keyboard in latter half, but
it's too little, too late. The theme does pop up in the score proper,
"Boylan Murdered" and "Is This Revenge?" teasing it before some focus is
applied to the idea in "Spencer Investigates." It recurs again in "One
World Only" and with more coolness at end of "Let's Go." But that's it
for character. Instrumentally, "The Trial" opens with meandering
keyboarding that doesn't include Spenser's theme, and there's a brash
acoustic guitar crescendo in "Squeeb." A hint of warmth and tonality
with guitars attempts to develop in "Pearl" and "Is This Revenge?" A
Hammond organ during "Yellow Corvette" is obnoxious but at least a stab
at the genre's norms. Otherwise, be prepared for industrial banging
sounds manipulated to staccato rhythms to overwhelm the work by its
middle third. These noises sound like they might have originated as
steel drums at some point, but they just as well could have been someone
rapping cookware in the kitchen. In "Wonderland," the thumping in the
bass is recalibrated to mimic a heartbeat, a tired musical choice. For
listeners who prefer the purely wretched masculinity of
Battleship to the detriment of their love life, the wailing
electric guitar technique is not forgotten once one encounters "Hawk Has
a Plan." Generally, the most commonly applied tool in
Spenser
Confidential is the lengthy crescendo of pounding or slapping bass
electronic pulses that can be synchronized to the film liberally and
without much effort. What's remarkable about this score is how little
emotional variation there is. There's nothing scary, exhilarating,
amusing, dramatic, or touching. There's no storytelling, no location, no
era. By the end, there's a hint of redemptive coolness in the only cue
of interest, "Spencer's Theme," and this is what the film needed the
whole time. Ultimately, Jablonsky phones in this assignment, offering
not the most flamboyantly mind-numbing music of his career for
Spenser Confidential but settling on something potentially worse:
music that elicits no response whatsoever.
* @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For Steve Jablonsky reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.2
(in 15 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 2.47
(in 11,912 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
There exists no official packaging for this album.
