"Doug's Corner"9/18/07
Marco Beltrami scores a solid new western that warrants your attention: 3:10 TO YUMA. It's a remake of a 1957 movie, sort of. [No spoilers so read on.] The first time around, Van Heflin and Glenn Ford played farmer and outlaw, this time Christian Bale and Russell Crowe do the roles respectively. Elmore Leonard's story is good. So are both movies, actually. But James Mangold brings more intensity to his remake, allowing the son who can't quite see the goodness in his dad or the evil in the outlaw play a bigger part in the tale. And, of course, we get two great actors making the moral conflicts compelling.
On to the music. Marco Beltrami manages an unusual feat today. He manages a melody, almost lost in today's film scoring scene. How he gets to it is of interest, too. The score plays via guitars, percussion, strings. Ideas are sparse, western-ish but in a contemporary way. Which means rhythm takes priority over tune. But that's the rub! As the story unfolds, so does the music. Ideas grow in substance, colors thicken. Then, at some point about two thirds of the way in, you notice Beltrami has brought trumpet into the mix. Shards of a longer melody have emerged. Things happen and composer and picture finally merge with a strong finish. Sure, Beltrami tips his hat to Morricone. Guitar rhythms, a lean trumpet solo in Spanish garb, percussion in tandem with the strumming, whatever. It's not a pretty score. It shouldn't be. Heard alone, it may be too stark, too lean, too mean. But it's the right timbre for this movie! It's also nice to hear a score get a decent mix in a movie today. It's not top-billed to be sure, but it gets a solid co-starring role. (The absence of car crashes and explosions is most welcome, too.)
If you've got two hours to spare, go see this movie. Okay, I take that back. You'll need more than two hours, what with getting to the theater, parking and whatnot. So make it three hours. It's still worth the time! |
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