Spy Game

Harry Gregson-Williams has written quite a good score for Tony Scott's surprisingly good spooks thriller Spy Game, starring Robert Redford, Brad Pitt and Catherine McCormack, with much of the action taking place in Beirut, Vietnam and China. Which is something Gregson-Williams makes use of in his score, which mixes ethnic influences with the typical spy movie score, i.e. lots of electronics - the kind of high tech sound so often heard in scores for movies like this.

The orchestra, conducted by Harry Gregson-Williams himself, is a decent sized orchestra, with mainly strings and brass, but often overshadowed by the electronics. The strings and brass is often used to support the synths, and not the other way around. Nothing wrong, with that, of course. Especially true considering that Gregson-Williams really uses his array of samples in the best possible way. "Muir Races to Work" and "Training Montage" are two really great action cues.

The ethnic parts of the score consists of Middle Eastern vocals and a small collection of instruments, such as flutes, erhu, symbalon and Chinese and Middle Eastern percussion. Gregson-Williams uses these elements rather sparingly, and just hints at the non-Western cultures we get to visit throughout the movie, which seems like a good decision. The opening of "Su-Chou Prison", for example. And "Beirut, a War Zone".

Spy Game is perfect music to listen to while at the gym, for example. It's exciting, there's lot of rythmic material, and it's quite powerful at times.