This film starring Nicholas Cage and directed by Brian de Palma has already
made something of a splash because of the initial long-long single-tracking
shot. This has been compared with the same effect in Orson Welles’
‘A Touch of Evil’. The film has otherwise received a rather
savage reception. None of the reviews I have seen have commented on the music.
Sakamoto wrote the score for The Last Emperor (it won an Academy Award).
This one is pretty impressive. The first track breathes sweetly and warmly:
a balm to the mind’s turmoil. The gentle contours take something of
John Barry’s style and a little of the lyric Herrmann. The second track
is jumpy. Track 3 makes noises like shaking, iron skeletal strands of barbed
wire pulled taut and humming in the wind - eldritch and threatening. Figures
scuttle and spin across the landscape. There is a hint of Shostakovich in
this music and even of Vaughan Williams (Symphonies 4 and 6) in the night-ride
through a terrain populated with caterwauling devils. A strange electronically
produced phasing effect is used as well as for the Tyler and Serena track
a synthesised echoey jazz treatment. A romantic score, then, dotted with
islands of violence. The song, Sin City (sung by Meredith Brooks)
is quite good. The other song (Freaky Things sung by LaKiesha Berri)
is shallowly commercial and holds little attention. This is quite a meaty
score and certainly worth exploring.
Reviewer
Rob Barnett
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