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Speed: (Mark Mancina) The Jan De Bont action
blockbuster
Speed was a financial champion of the 1994 summer
season, spurring the careers of its two young lead actors, confirming
actor Dennis Hopper as an expert at portraying freaks, and inspiring a
sequel on the high seas. The premise of
Speed was an original
one, forcing a group of frightened urbanites to drive their city bus
faster than a certain speed or be destroyed by a bomb planted underneath
them. Another would-be composer branching off from the rock group "Yes"
(joining Trevor Rabin), keyboardist Mark Mancina debuted in the
mainstream with his first major solo film score for
Speed.
Mancina would eventually be recognized as one of the more successful
artists to walk through the doors of Hans Zimmer's Media Ventures
composing house (though existing really only on the periphery of that
group), and part of that success was due to Mancina's head start on many
of the mainstay artists of that production factory. Mancina was heavily
influenced by Zimmer's style of combining synthesizers and orchestras,
and he continued to develop ideas that crossed between both genres for
several years. His score for
Speed was effective in its capacity
to generate excitement (and it was therefore a strong piece of music for
the film), but it is even more of an interesting case study of how the
general Media Ventures sound got started. Zimmer had already established
his dominance over the synthetic realm, and, by 1994, had produced the
largely electronic
Beyond Rangoon with an elegant mastery of his
machinery. For Mancina's
Speed, however, you had the opportunity
to hear structural ideas and electronic sampling that was in their
infancy. Many of the rhythmic loops, electronic substitutes for real
instruments, as well as musical sound effects, are all recognizable from
later staples of the Media Ventures studio. Aside from Zimmer, it would
take the other similar composers another few years before their
electronic output would mature into the form that most listeners grew
accustomed to. While
The Rock was really the coming out party for
such enthusiasts, Mancina's own
Twister would offer a more
sophisticated blend of that matured electronic sound along with the
orchestral ensemble in the same year.
The simplicity of the sounds in
Speed do not
detract from the score's ultimate achievement in the film, but their
deficiencies do surface when hearing the score on album. On paper, the
music for
Speed is well written, with several effective motifs
assembled around a decent action theme. This theme is performed with
noble intentions as the opening credits role through an elevator shaft.
A delicate piano and string performance of this theme is offered in the
end titles cue. It is a surprisingly compelling identity for an
otherwise brainless film. Short adaptations of this theme appear during
the softer sequences in the film, leaving the cohesion of the action
material up to Mancina's secondary, underlying motif. This eight-note
keyboarded motif is sharp in performance and is varied in tempo
throughout the score to fit into nearly every cue. Despite its
simplicity, it works better than the title theme in holding the work
together. The scenes on board the speeding bus at the heart of
Speed inspire the best action music from Mancina for the project,
with the rescue cue (appearing in the second position on the album)
presenting a lengthy series of satisfying thematic performances. The
rhythmic loops are typically strong during the later scenes of the bus'
journey, however other portions of the film suffer from an arrhythmic,
more dissonant personality. The difficult side of the
Speed score
is the fact that it is not as fleshed out as it could have been. As
mentioned before, the synthesized representations of real instruments
were not as well developed in 1994 and thus, some of the jumpy
keyboarding and striking electronic cello renderings are badly dated.
The percussive elements were already well enough established to
compensate for the lack of the Media Ventures bass that rumbled through
all of their later action scores. One notable sound effect heard
throughout the work is one of declining pitch that very well represents
the appropriate sound of a passing air horn. The album presentation is
rearranged from film order to emphasize the four or five best cues at
the beginning. After these true highlights, the album degenerates into
more mindless territory before finishing with the beautiful performance
of the title theme over the end credits. Overall, it's a worthy action
score, if not a bit underdeveloped, and it represented an impressive
debut for Mancina on the big stage.
***
| Bias Check: | For Mark Mancina reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 3 (in 8 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.16
(in 6,387 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
