Saturday, March 5, 2011

Music Review: Paycheck

Despite poor acting performances by Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman, the movie Paycheck was quite enjoyable. The score was done by John Powell, who also scored the music for the Bourne trilogy and The Italian Job. In fact, this score has a similar sound to his music for those films. It also seems to be informed by the soundtrack to The Fugitive. Much of the music is somewhat bizarre—exactly what you would expect from a film based on the writings of Philip K. Dick.[1]

My verdict: The music does a good job of setting moods. You feel anxious during the chase scenes and thrilled during the scenes when they're figuring things out. There are a few interesting motifs. However, generally there's not much memorable about the music when you separate it from the film. Even so, I enjoyed the soundtrack overall. You can get a general idea of what the soundtrack is like by listening to the first track "Main Title". The last track, "Rachel's Party" is nice to listen to.


Notes:

[1] You may never have heard of Philip K. Dick, but you might have heard of some of the movies based on his stories: Blade Runner, Minority Report, Next, Through a Scanner Darkly, and Total Recall (as well as this one, Paycheck). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip K. Dick#Adaptations.

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