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Review of The Tourist (James Newton Howard)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... only if you want to hear James Newton Howard channel the
affable, comedic European sensibilities of composers like Gabriel Yared,
an irony hopefully not ultimately missed by the filmmakers.
Avoid it... if you expect this spy thriller to sound anything like Howard's Salt or its equivalents, because The Tourist is instead an exercise in dainty romance and spoof-quality chase material.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
The Tourist: (James Newton Howard/Gabriel Yared)
When nobody involved in a production was the first choice for his or her
assigned role, it can't be surprising that the final product is
uninspired. Such was the destiny of The Tourist, the 2010 remake
of the 2005 French spy thriller Anthony Zimmer. The Columbia
picture went through several different directors and lead stars before
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck shot a duo of Angelina Jolie and Johnny
Depp that had very poor on screen chemistry in a plot that required a
significant amount of romantic spark to succeed. Jolie is a British
secret agent and Depp is supposedly a tourist caught up in a tangled web
of betrayals and identity shifts. The two comically elude layers of
antagonists and weave in and out of impossible circumstances before
their partnership leads to a laughably predictable resolution. The flair
of Paris and Venice couldn't compensate for lurching plot misdirection
and lousy dialogue performed without the witty pizzazz to place The
Tourist properly in the genre of comedy. Critics mostly blasted the
film (or at least disregarded it as lackluster), though strong
international box office returns likely contributed to its surprising
nominations in major categories at the Golden Globes. Not immune to the
game of musical chairs being played with the crew of The Tourist
was composer Gabriel Yared, whose score would yield a European
sensibility probably along the same lines as Frederic Talgorn's for the
previous incarnation of the story on screen. While likely romantically
generic in its sum in this particular case, Yared's work often has a
Mediterranean style akin to Ennio Morricone and dozens of contemporaries
of lesser fame. Henckel von Donnersmarck, in only his second feature at
the helm (after the widely praised The Lives of Others), decided
to reject Yared's score within a matter of weeks of the film's scheduled
distribution.
After learning that most of the temp score assembled to replace Yared's work (based upon the director's general preferences as stated to his music editors) was written by James Newton Howard, the American composer was hired as a last minute replacement. It's not the first time Howard has handled such a major assignment with little time to spare, but unlike King Kong, his music for The Tourist does exhibit all the telltale signs of a score written in a rush. Ironically, though, Henckel von Donnersmarck got exactly what he heard in the temp track, however, because the finished replacement score sounds very much like a wide-ranging, schizophrenic collection of genre staples and fragments pulled from Howard's previous works. The composer has, at several times in recent years, sounded as though he has been channeling the style of other composers through his own stylistic devices, especially in regards to John Powell's ostinato-driven thriller sounds. But in the case of The Tourist, it seems that he went the route of absolutely generic cliches and did so with his tongue firmly lodged in his cheek. Listeners expecting him to reprise his ballsy Powell-like approach from Salt earlier in the year will be disappointed, though there are a couple of places that do touch upon that sound. He does humorously include two slight renditions of the primary Salt theme on cello starting at 1:24 into "Arrival at Venice." Otherwise, The Tourist is a series of mostly dainty, comical rhythmic devices and stereotypical romance techniques that were met with disdain from some critics in their reviews of the film. For the quirky aspect of the film, Howard devises an affable but silly pair of four-note progressions and sets them over a spritely rhythm of paired notes (heard together for the first time at 1:10 into "Burned Letter"). They're not used very frequently, however, diminishing their effectiveness. Secondary motifs include basic faux suspense in the spy genre that almost seems to poke fun at David Arnold's Quantum material in the James Bond franchise. Howard's love theme for The Tourist, developed initially in the opening portion of "Paranoid Math Teacher" and flourishing with orchestral zeal in several cues thereafter, is frightfully similar in progression to something Alan Menken would write for a Disney film, but phrased in the instrumental language of Rachel Portman's Only You. An offshoot in "Bedroom Dreams" oddly shares several progressions with Joel McNeely's main theme for the Tinkerbell franchise. Piano solos in "Elise Offers a Ride" and others lack much performance emphasis. The occasional application of an accordion is stereotypical to Paris, but unfortunately spills over to the action in Venice for the benefit of unquestioning audiences. Puffed flutes over the theme, along with tingling celesta and other light percussion, solidify the theme's extremely airy personality, almost pushing the score to the realm of parody in cues like "A Very Nice Hotel" and "Arriving at the Ball." A descending celesta figure late in "Because I Kissed You" is reminiscent of the time motif in Alan Silvestri's Back to the Future music. The tone of the score changes suddenly whenever the chase requires, the title theme and associated rhythms in "Sudden Departure" joined by hip synthetic rhythm-setters. Interestingly, the fluffy tone of The Tourist is in part perpetuated by Howard's choice to mix the orchestral elements far in front of the synthetic ones, another reason this score really sounds little like Salt. Even the pair of "Rooftop Run" and "Chase Through the Canals" is dominated by treble elements, too. Because the score jumps around in tone so frequently, it has little narrative flow, the punch-line cue "Personal Cheque" closing out the score on an unresolved note. The album presentation is generous with Howard's material, including over an hour of it (perhaps unnecessarily). But the bonus of the album is hearing one retained cue from Yared's score at the end, a dance saturated with the same European sensibilities that Howard clearly emulated. In the end, one has to wonder if Yared's entire score would have worked just as well, if not better. ***
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 64:07
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes a somewhat odd note from the director about working
(eventually) with Howard on this production.
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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 The Tourist are Copyright © 2010, Varèse Sarabande and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 1/25/11 (and not updated significantly since). |
