ALZATI SPIA

In the Line of Spia

The big problem with being an Ennio Morricone fan is that he has written so many scores and probably well over 300 hours of music in the process, that there are inevitably going to be times when you buy a score and think you've already heard it before under a different title. This is more or less the case with Alzati Spia, in its own right a superior thriller score, but essentially a "highlights" album of Morricone's work in the genre. He provided better scores later in the 1980s for two Hollywood movies (one of the rare times when his Hollywood scores can be considered superior to their Italian equivalents) with In the Line of Fire and The Untouchables, both of which are highly reminiscent of Alzati Spia (which means "Rise up, Spy").

The music is highly enjoyable, based around a flugelhorn theme (performed by regular Morricone collaborator Oscar Valdambrini). But the problem is - there's one repetition after another of this theme. The score in the first place was highly-repetitive, and this definitive edition release, available from 2000 on Screen Trax from producer Claudio Fuiano, adds yet more repetition by adding several more variations on the main theme (though "variation" is a strong term to use in this context, because I'll be hard-pressed to find the difference between them). OK, I guess they're nice to have from a collector's perspective, but musically it's something of a nonsense.

This music is strong, well-performed and features excellent sound quality, but unfortunately there's just too much repetition to make any kind of repeated listening unlikely by even the most diehard Morricone collector. Fans of In the Line of Fire are recommended to pick it up, but for others there are probably hundreds of Morricone scores I'd recommend first.

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Rating ***