- Composed by Justin Burnett
- Varèse Sarabande / 2013 / 41m
Getaway sounds like a film worth seeing. Nicolas Cage was clearly unexpectedly busy because instead it’s Ethan Hawke playing a burned-out racing driver who has to get back behind the wheel one last time to save his wife from mortal danger. At the time of writing, the film has an impressive 2% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes, with 2 out of 107 reviews being positive, and an average score of 2.6 out of 10. Definitely worth seeing. Still, the film doesn’t have to be any good in order to get a decent score, which is by Justin Burnett, easily the most high-profile he’s done as a headline composer (though he’s had a mixture of credits on Media Ventures and Remote Control scores going back as far as 1996). It begins entertainingly enough, with a very familiar rhythmic pattern forming what might be called the main theme in the opening track, then a piece of barnstorming action in “Stealing the Shelby”.
It’s all done with samples (or at least, I assume it is – you can never be entirely sure with these scores) and it’s done well enough. The action when it appears is full of energy and provides the requisite thrills, though they are somewhat fleeting and don’t last long in the memory. The trouble is, after the impressive opening, a fair proportion of the album consists of pretty uninteresting textural suspense music, punctuated by action from time to time. That action when it appears is worth listening, but highly repetitive – it’s hard to distinguish one track from another. (Yes, the HORN OF DOOM does appear, though you have to wait till the end of the tenth track, “Heavy Traffic”.) Also, it’s a fairly brief album by modern standards and much of it still isn’t all that interesting. One suspects that with a larger scope and a bigger budget that Burnett could write something really rather entertaining – this score has its moments, but not quite enough. Getaway is decent, but sounds all too disposable to leave a lasting impression.
Rating: ** 1/2
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He also had a kinda-sorta high-profile assignment back in 2000 when he scored the first Dungeons & Dragons movie. A terrible film, to be sure, but a relatively big-budget release starring some well-known actors, anyway. Can’t even remember what I thought of the score, though I’m pretty sure I have it somewhere.
Ah yes, you’re right – I forgot about that one.
Dungeons & Dragons and Getaway share the same director, believe it or not!
They let the director of Dungeons and Dragons make another movie?
That guy was also responsible for “American Haunting”, if memory serves.
Yep, Dungeons & Dragons, American Haunting, and Getaway are Courtney Solomon’s three directorial efforts. And each of them has been scored by the same composer under a different name (Justin Caine Burnett, Caine Davidson, and Justin Burnett respectively).
Please review the polish composer Wojciech Kilar. He is very good and has also composed for some American movies, like Dracula.
Do you know if there’s a Score-Release for “American Haunting”? … and why did he change his Name for that one, anyway? o_O
Yeah, there is an American Haunting score release, one of MSM’s early digital-only releases on iTunes. It’s not bad! I can only assume there was some contractual reason for using a pseudonym, perhaps like PotC being credited to Badelt.