Jarhead

Newman continues his fruitful collaboration with director Sam Mendes, who made such a splash with his debut, American Beauty. Its follow up, Road to Perdition might not have been quite as successful, but was still an impressively crafted piece of work. Similarly, Newman's score for American Beauty has become a piece of iconic, contemporary scoring, even if Road to Perdition is perhaps the more accomplished of the two. Jarhead is yet another new change in style for the director as he heads for the heat of the first Gulf War, but focusing on the inaction the ground troops endured during the campaign, which was largely won through air power; everyone else's job was more or less a clearing up exercise.

Given its focus, Jarhead is not really much of a war movie in the traditional sense and neither does Thomas Newman's score follow the current vogue for war films to be accompanied by endless adagios and swathes of nobility. Perhaps the most obvious precedent would be Carter Burwell's Three Kings, although Newman makes fewer obvious attempts toward anything that specifically suggests the region. The major focus is on edgy and often uncomfortable percussive fragments; it's almost the flip side to American Beauty's inane perkiness. There's no real main theme, although certain ideas recur, notably that used in Raining Oil and Desert Storm. Newman's regular group of performance contribute on a typically unlikely assortment of instruments, but all used so effectively that the score's sound world is sufficient to tie it all together.

Newman's perverse musical wit is in evidence on occasion - comedy track titles notwithstanding - with the cheerful, disturbingly titled Dickskinner where percussion, strumming guitars and an offbeat whistled tune generate a kind of post modern parody on the Colonel Bogey or Great Escape marches. The album is rounded out with some songs, all used in the film, which are perfectly enjoyable changes of pace, although die-hard fans might want to programme them out to maintain the continuity of Newman's music. Mendes seems able to inspire the composer to tap into his quirky side, but without spilling over into the kind of unpalatable soundscapes he occasionally conjures up. Jarhead may not one his most ingratiating scores, but it's more striking and engaging that it appears on first listen and worthy of follow up investigation.