Narrow Margin

Bruce Broughton's penchant for scoring obscure films hit a peak with the 1990 thriller, Narrow Margin. The movie was very unknown, and Broughton's score became a rarity in of itself. His score for the film noir is fairly unique when compared to his other projects. Rather than his usual bombastic orchestral scores, Narrow Margin is more ambient.

As far as suspense scores go, Narrow Margin is a doozy. Alot of the underscore is ambient, but when the music kicks into full gear it really does offer some thrilling brass blasts and impressive use of percussion. Broughton throws different ideas out there for the action music (the great orchestrations in 'Chopper Chase'). One of the big elements of Narrow Margin lies with the piano material in the score. Every now and then, as the music turns more ambient, a repeating four note piano motif creepily appears. It's effective, to say the least.

Narrow Margin is a great thriller effort from Bruce Broughton. As opposed to the usual Broughton feel, it relies on eery ambience and great suspenseful chase music that works on so many level. The score could even be considered in the same category as many of the classic suspense scores from Hollywood. The only major issue is that the album could be considered a little 'slow', due to the amount of ambience used.