November 7, 2014

  • Reclaim: New Inon Zur Film Score

    Ryan Phillippe and Rachelle LeFevre play a young couple looking to adopt a little girl from Puerto Rico when they run into a a local thug (John Cusack) and things get intense when their daughter disappears.  Alan White’s fourth film, Reclaim, appeared in late September.  Video Game music enthusiasts are perhaps more familiar with the work of composer Inon Zur.  He is known for a host of epic symphonic video game scores for projects such Lord of the Rings: War In the North, Dragon Age II, and Prince of Persia.

    The opening “Haiti Requiem and Arrival” features a primary vocalise (in a fairly cliché usage) later picked up by the orchestra.  Interesting rhythmic syncopations help propel the music forward.  The primary idea is a series of six chords which are further iterated throughout “Nina” thus cementing their importance well.  Zur’s thematic swells work very well pulling lyrical material then over this important harmonic motif.  “A New Family” is an opportunity for his warm orchestral and thematic writing to shine and it is quite beautiful and uplifting.  Darker suggestions begin to appear in the score as “Missing” plays out with a sense of regret and concern building emotionally in the music.  The shift then begins to more thriller-like music with “Taken” as a percussive ostinato patterm itself fairly disjointed and unsettling, which works very well, is set against a variety of sounds and building string ideas very effectively.  Zur is very good at helping to build scenarios musically and his use of ostinato tends to drive this a bit as other layers are added over the course of a sequence (“Captured”).  The action aspect of the score eventually increases as we move into the final half of the presentation with “The Big Big Escape” featuring a variety of unusual sounds and percussive and sequenced ideas against string orchestra.  Stops and starts work well to break up the sound as thematic threads are inserted and allow the music to unfold well dramatically without the more typical barrage of sound.  Two other action sequences, “Car Chase” and “Jungle Chase”, offer some variation on this approach.

    There are a couple of additional songs that are part of the release.  The first of these, “Mamasita” is written and performed by Edgardo Monserrat lending some ethnic pop flair.  Two others (“Mujer” and “Tu Eres Mala”) break up the score material and perhaps would have been best lumped together at the end.  The disc also closes with “Fighting the World” written by 11-year old Maddie White and made popular via YouTube.  Zur decided to add this as one additional component for the film.  The song material makes up a little over 14 minutes of the release as a result.  Reclaim heard just on its own is another good effort by Inon Zur whose sound continues to reveal a growing personal style combining modern Hollywood orchestral scoring with his unique stamp.