Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #1,871
Written 12/8/10
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Buy it... only if you specifically noticed the strong brass
performances of the score's compelling title theme or its more
harmonious synthetic ambience in the context of the film.
Avoid it... if you expect Richard Marvin to provide a truly unique
sense of creative style in his symphonic/synthetic blend to match the
technological intrigue of the concept.
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| Marvin |
Surrogates: (Richard Marvin) A truly interesting
premise was butchered in Surrogates, the 2009 adaptation of a
2005 comic book that explored the idea of a future utopia in which much
of society conducts its lives through surrogate avatars that represent
them while they lounge around at home. There is a split in society
between the surrogate-allowable areas and the human-only ones, opening
up all sorts of possibilities for socio-political conflict. The perfect
world of the surrogates is rocked when there is a rare murder, one
involving a government experiment with a weapon that was intended to
neutralize the real person using the surrogate but in fact can override
the safety mechanisms and kill the operator instead. Bruce Willis plays
the aging cop searching for the truth, and when his surrogate is
destroyed in a pursuit, he must continue his investigation in his own
body at significantly more peril. Response to Surrogates was
largely negative, the enthusiasts of the comic book disgruntled by the
many changes to the story (including a happier, Hollywood-style ending)
and critics lamenting the fact that the script degenerated into
formulaic action rather than taking advantage of the concept's most
intriguing aspects. The film wasn't a hit with audiences, either,
requiring worldwide grosses to have a chance at recouping its $80 budget
for Disney's Touchstone division. Director Jonathan Mostow had used the
services of several composers over the previous dozen years, but for
Surrogates he chose to extend his collaboration with Richard
Marvin to a fourth entry. Their best known work together was for the
submarine thriller U-571 in 2000, generally considered to be an
entertaining duo of film and music but not particularly original on
either front. Marvin's career has been mostly defined by his
concentration on television music, earning his way with "Six Feet Under"
and "Without a Trace," among a plethora of others reaching a hundred
total titles as of 2009. Major feature scoring assignments have been
elusive for the composer, however, and largely because of the promise he
showed with U-571, film music collectors seemed cautiously
optimistic that Marvin would rise to the occasion in Surrogates.
The blemish upon the music for U-571, of course, is that it's a
highly derivative score, betraying its temp-track influences quite
distractingly, both on screen and its highly sought promotional album.
That tendency is diminished in Surrogates, though Marvin still
seems to struggle when attempting to create his own sound for this
film.
While there is no overwhelming feeling of deja vu for a
soundtrack enthusiast when listening to
Surrogates, the score
does give you a sense that no really original territory is being
explored. There is one very obvious reference to another score during
Marvin's most impressive action sequence, but otherwise, the score
adheres to general conventions and cliches in this genre that make it
serviceable but not memorable. On the whole, the demeanor of the score
matches some of the suspense and thriller work by Marco Beltrami, but
the ensemble, which consists of bloated string and brass sections
supplemented by a substantial dose of electronics, is never really
applied to constructs that will impress. Thematically,
Surrogates
is served with one very compelling idea, a touch of compassion with
enough brawn to represent both sides of the Willis character. This
highlight of the score is introduced with propulsive conviction in
"Drive to Club" and is alluded to throughout the score in lesser forms
before continued brass statements in "Shift Enter" and the conclusion in
"Aftermath." It's a shame that Marvin didn't find ways to incorporate
this idea into more of the mechanically procedural underscore in
between. That said, he does boil it down and romanticize a variant of
the idea for solo piano with soft, noir-like orchestral backing in "I
Want You" and, to a lesser extent, in "Aftermath," the former a pivotal
scene of personal reconciliation. The action cues in
Surrogates
are not plentiful, dominated by "Warrant Received/Foot Chase." This cue
is unfortunately the clearest source of temp-track regurgitation,
however, starting immediately with the rising cello rhythms from Don
Davis'
The Matrix and emulating the 1999 score in several places
thereafter. The low-key suspense portions of
Surrogates aren't
worth noting; they alternate between stereotypically rambling string
ostinatos (executed with far less performance enthusiasm than anything
ever produced by John Powell) and a variety of sampled electronic
effects for atmosphere. One noteworthy exception to the rather bland
style of the entire score is "Pix Title Sequence," a mostly synthetic
three minutes of light rhythmic bubbling, sound effects, and
soul-flavored layers of female vocals. It's an attempt at a super-cool,
futuristic posture, and it's generally harmonious enough to suffice as a
guilty pleasure. But the cheesy orchestra hit stingers make the cue
sound like a tired local television news theme, too. Overall,
Surrogates is a functional score that barely scratches out a
moderate three-star rating. It was released as a promo on behalf of the
composer before being picked up for an identical commercial CD release,
both in 2009.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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