The Score

The cast for The Score is undoubtedly a producer's dream. Brando, De Niro & Norton - examples of the best actors from three generations, playing alongside one another. It is almost ironic that the best of the lot is probably Ed Norton, De Niro is good, but his performance is quite restrained and could probably have been done effectively by any number of actors. Brando, looking distinctly elephantine, is effortless and whatever onset shenanigans transpired, don't appear to have rubbed off on what is a low key, but engaging heist thriller.

Shore's music is very much variations on an basic idea, that being a percussion backing with orchestra and jazz elements mixed together in what seems perfect music for the film, even if you've never seen it. There isn't a main theme as such, there are repeating motifs - one notable brass and horn motif is used to build suspense, mainly because it just repeats and varies itself slightly higher each time. There isn't much to it, but it's quite effective. The jazz musicians thrown into the mix sound as if they are improvising from time to time. Flashback has some weird electric guitar stylings - lots of feedback and distortion, which is creepy and effective, while Recon and several of the other cues contain some nice bass improvisation, even if the mix does make it a little hard to make out against the rest of the orchestra.

The mood doesn't really change much, just variations from laid back to tension building. On one level it works more as an exercise in producing varying amounts of drama and excitement with the same basic idea and in that sense, Shore's score is masterful. There is enough variation to validate the running time, although in this case, a couple of the low key jazz songs that appear in the film itself might have been nice to break the mood slightly, but not upsetting the overall tone of the album. Not one of Shore's most interesting scores, but for a slightly offbeat effort, worth a few spins. Nice.