Score composed by: Harry Gregson Williams

Released on CD by: Sony Pictures Entertainment, June 09. 2009

Here’s the thing. In every musical genre, there’s always going be that old and familiar “conflict” between the older and the younger generations of people supporting it. The former will argue regarding the gradual decrease of quality as years go by and the younger ones, who are mostly people who have grown up with this very new listens, will naturally consider them perfectly normal and accuse the other team of grumpy old men syndromes.  In my opinion, the truth lies just in-between. It is truth that film score fans (just like classical music fans for instance) are generally hard to please and very demanding, but who would blame them in a genre that was blessed with people like Bernstein, Steiner, Korngold and Gold but also Goldsmith and Williams, to name but a few? When the bar is set at such heights, the inevitable comparisons will happen, no matter what. But it’s not that anyone actually supports the notion that every film score should carry elements from the afore-mentioned gentlemen’s musical heritage; still, it’s pretty obvious that the overall quality of modern film scores (post 2004) has generally gone down the drain, year by year. And with sadly popular new trends emerging and taking over the popular part of the film score genre gradually, trends that want film music to follow garbage-cheap, easy and impersonal teenage-aimed pop / rock paths, things are even worse.

Harry Gregson Williams started with such a big premise next to Zimmer and has later moved onto finding his own way into more electonica-based, more urban-sounding film scores that were mostly in the moody and ambient side of things. With Tony Scott, his long-time collaborator (actually the 2nd man after Denzel Washington with whom the director appears to have a professional hard-on), Harry has found both a nest for his artistic journeys and was able to develop a very personal and instantly recognizable sound for his music. Although the sound palette was limited right from the beginning and his compositional techniques pretty standard and poor, still he managed to infuse his Tony Scott collaborations – like Man On Fire, Spy Game or even Domino with passion; strong sentiments where all over both his instrumental compositions but also the songs he wrote for the director, fitting both his frantic shooting and editing style, but also emitting strong piano melodies and mesmerizingly beautiful vocal lines that satisfied some of us’ demanding ears and yearning musical souls. Such a score is the previously mentioned Man on fire for one, a truly inspired modern ambient score that doesn’t leave a single moment go by without taking full musical advantage of it. Now, as we already established, HGW’s equation of success was fairly simple from the beginning but It kept him on a winning route because of the honest and pure sentiments his music was transmitting to the audience. These days – sadly, it has all drained, leaving nothing to be earned from the whole experience, other than the impression of someone who is completely apathetic to the on-screen goings and utterly drained of any emotions whatsoever, even during the final, long and intense climax of the movie; someone who is merely providing a careless ambient background instead of grabbing the opportunity to deliver, as he did in the past. This results to the countless production of identical drones from Domino onwards and a continuing loss of any kind of inspiration whatsoever within his film music anymore. And whilst many will argue that a third-party caused him to change, well Tony  Scott and his movies had always been the same through the years so the only variable in the equation is Harry and his overweared musical personality. And the balance leans even more against Harry especially when compared to the vastly superior score by David Shire for the original movie, back in the 70′s.