The Statement

This movie is a cool old fashion throwback to when Michael Caine was "the man."

Remember those gritty thrillers like Icpress Files, Get Carter  and The Italian Job (the real one)? The director of the original Thomas Crown Affair, Norman Jewison was brought in to tell the fascinating story of the pursuit of French Nazi (Caine) desperately seeking absolution for war crimes that are quickly catching back up to him. It's a decadent film and the score is equally so and If it turned out this music had been a re-recording of some late 1960's-early 70's thriller, I wouldn't have been surprised.

I confess that I have never heard of composer Normand Corbeil.  Looking him up in IMDB, I quickly discovered he's worked steadily and proficiently through the years on Double Jeapordy, Art of War , Extreme Ops and the fantastic Robert Carlyle miniseries Hitler: The Rise of Evil last year. I now plan to keep an eye out for whatever he does from this point on.

This is primarily a subdued string-based score with Bernard Herrmann influences. Herrmann himself would have been proud of "In The Mountain," where minor-key strings work up to a muted frenzy. The brass is rarely highlighted except in action cues ("Assassin In The Washroom", "Give Me A Lift ","The Chase) where they supplement agitated strings.   A muted women's chorus glides through multiple tracks ("God Is Good", "C'mon Let's Go", "Flashback" and others).

There's nothing "showy" about the score, which is more concerned with portraying the two themes of repentance and portending doom. As key complaint though would be that for all the technique on display here, the score lacks development on a whole and much like listening to a complete Herrmann/Hitchcock score, the experience can wear you down emotionally which make the listen a tiring, but emotionally satisfying experience.