Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #1,836
Written 11/17/10
Invert Colors
Buy it... if you like music that reminds you of the fact that
government should make you feel uncomfortable, a sound competently
conveyed by John Powell in this cold, prickly score.
Avoid it... if you value continuity of construct beyond just the
instrumental palette, in which case this very light variation on the
rhythmic movement and percussive slapping of The Bourne Identity
will bore you.
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| Powell |
Fair Game: (John Powell) All you apologists for
former American Vice President Dick Cheney out there need not pay
attention to Doug Liman's 2010 adaptation of the books written by
Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson, because if you're an apologist for
Cheney's evil tenure as the grand puppet master of the White House from
2001 to 2009, then Fair Game is likely to only piss you off. Such
staunch conservatives will surely brush aside Fair Game as the
stuff of liberal fantasies (especially with actor Sean Penn involved),
but the truly scary aspect of the film is the amount of fact included in
its narrative. The basics about Plame and Wilson aren't really disputed;
the government operative and diplomat were the victims of Cheney's
retribution for Wilson's public rebuke of George W. Bush's primary case
for war against Iraq (that being the probable existence of weapons of
mass destruction). After the revelation of the identity of Plame as a
CIA agent, several important contacts working with the American
government around the world were killed, and the office of the Vice
President was forever tarnished for its political viciousness. The film
portrays the spin of these events without relying upon too much
narrative fiction (depicting nearly everyone by their real names,
including roles for administration henchmen Scooter Libby, Ari Fleisher,
and Karl Rove), the villain clearly being Cheney and the clueless goat
clearly shown to be Bush, though the tension that makes Fair Game
a political thriller despite using recent, known events is generated
through the concurrent examination of the complex marriage between Plame
and Wilson. Those attempting to forget the Bush administration's
disastrous tenure may find redemption in this second half of emphasis in
Fair Game, bolstered by strong performances by Penn as Wilson and
Naomi Watts as Plame. Not unexpectedly, the film was received with
considerable critical praise and was immediately adopted as a likely
candidate for awards recognition given its inevitable anti-Bush spin.
Liman had collaborated with composer John Powell for his two more
successful action/chase thrillers of the 2000's, The Bourne
Identity and Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and Powell once again returns,
this time for a production with a far more limited budget. There is a
sense of propulsive movement to the events in Fair Game that
would suggest that a light variant of the score for The Bourne
Identity would be merited, the instrumentation largely the same but
the tone scaled back to emphasize the intrigue of more realistic
espionage and political deceit.
The single dominant characteristic of Powell's music
for
Fair Game is its cold balance between hazy atmospheric
frustration and prickly rhythmic precision. It is no doubt a troubling
representation of a political chess game, literally tapping and dancing
in restrained scope to mirror the moves made by players in the film. The
choice of ensemble is key to making this game work, using varied
percussive elements as the connecting tissue between the keyboarded and
electric guitar ambience of intrigue and the orchestral strings
representing the fleeting warmth of the troubled marriage. There is not
enough organic contribution to
Fair Game to define it as anything
other than a mechanically ominous thriller score, its slapping attitude
reflecting the dismissive anger of the federal government while hints of
up-tempo, string-performed ostinatos occasionally fight against the
grain with mutedly snazzy defiance. While the sum of this equation is
sufficient in addressing the battle of wits between a government and its
betrayed operatives, the latter portion of fighting rhythmic flair
easily produces the highlights of the score when heard on its own,
culminating in a slightly redemptive tone of hip gravity in "Testify."
The looped rhythms and string (or guitar) contributions begin in "The
White House" and slowly build throughout the score until this final
moment of satisfaction. There are melodic phrases explored in several of
the similar cues in between, though none of them is consistently
developed enough to qualify as the score's primary identity. Instead,
the attitude generated by the instrumentation and rhythms is the heart
of
Fair Game, interrupted unfortunately by the cues of ambient
droning. This other half of the score begins immediately in "Kuala
Lumpur" and will remind listeners of the generically sampled electronic
background noise that often dominates Harry Gregson-Williams'
lower-budget thriller scores. The later cues "Gathering Intel," "Sixteen
Words," and "Run Up to War" continue this drab material; some of the
manipulated sounds and overwhelming bass tones in a cue like "Sixteen
Words" will offer nothing of substance to even a Powell collector. There
is, in a few of these cues, a slight influence of stereotypical Middle
Eastern progressions in deeply keyboarded background ramblings, merged
finally with the rhythmic character motifs in "Testify." Some listeners
will hear a slight sense of humor in the lightly churning demeanor of
"Smaky," but otherwise there is little to really warm up to in this
score on album. It successfully makes you feel uncomfortable about the
concepts and character interactions in the film, and what suffices to
that end for the picture is a major detriment to a 40-minute album
presentation. Unlike Scooter Libby, Powell can be whole-heartedly
pardoned for giving us that uneasy feeling.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
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Bias Check:
For John Powell reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.31
(in 51 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.16
(in 52,894 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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