Product Description

Director Tony Scott's buddy pic-cum-espionage thriller shrewdly unites Robert Redford and Brad Pitt, pretty-boy box-office icons from two different generations. But its tense musical score embodies a gratifying sense of cross-cultural experimentation that seems as doggedly genre-expanding as it does dramatically tough. Young composer Harry Gregson-Williams (, , , ) employs haunting Eastern instrumental modalities, symphonic flourishes, and spare choral touches here but crucially weds them to driving, polyrhythmic percussion and pulsing techno club grooves. Continuing a contemporary scoring trend that largely eschews thematic melodies in favor of evocative atmospherics, the composer's studio-savvy fusion has conjured up a soundscape of surprisingly emotional twists and turns, but one that also seems to grow more determinedly electro-modern with each successive cut. This is that rare score that proves that pop trend can indeed inform classical tradition--and much to the benefit of both.