A review by JAMES SOUTHALL

Director Wayne Kramer follows up his acclaimed The Cooler with the more conventional-sounding Running Scared, a mob thriller starring Paul Walker and Cameron Bright; it's garnered some good reviews and I look forward to seeing it, whenever it might be released in England's green and pleasant land.  Before his directorial career set off, Kramer was well-known in film music circles, having contributed to various messageboards and mailing lists, and indeed the music for his first movie, by Mark Isham, was note-perfect and made a great album.  This time round, he hires Isham again, who has worked on numerous thrillers over the years, with decidedly mixed results - music that's almost always perfect for the films (ie, mission accomplished) but which doesn't necessarily work so well on album.

With a rather daunting 70-minute running time, it's almost with trepidation that one might approach the album from Running Scared, but fortunately Isham has crafted an solid score once again (though not one which remains compelling throughout).  He combines several elements here; most striking is the lovely guitar theme which opens the album, and crops up frequently thereafter, most notably in a synthesised version in "Nobody Knows Nobody".  (Also in the best-titled track of the year, "Love on a Washing Machine", which instantly conjures up memories of my own experiences in launderettes back in my younger days.)  He doesn't necessarily have a reputation for it, but Isham is a master melodist, and this is a fine example of his gifts.  Much of the score, however, is considerably less melodic, with the synthesised style of last year's superb Crash making another appearance, even complete with female vocalist.  Then there's the action music - I say "action music", but don't expect big brassy sounds, this is thrilling music on a much baser level, with raw, mostly synthesised music creating a claustrophobic, incredibly effective atmosphere.

Isham's highly creative when he sees the opportunity, and the almost music box-like theme that plays under ominous synthesised moans and groans in "Dez and Edele's" is ingenious; and he occasionally underpins serious suspense music with very subtle guitar solos, which again is a clever approach.  Not everything works so well, though - as I said above, this is an extremely long album, and some of the music just doesn't work so well on the album.  The eight-minute "A Mother's Instinct", for instance, is a very effective piece of suspense scoring, which just isn't interesting enough musically to sustain itself on a CD, and some of the synth-heavy action music can become rather wearing after a while.  It's pretty impressive on the whole, if probably more suited to being in the film than on an album, and after scoring Racing Stripes and now Running Scared, one can only wonder what form of high-velocity ambulation will crop up in Isham's next film title.

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Tracks

1. Running Scared (1:33)
2. Love on a Washing Machine (1:56)
3. The Duke (1:37)
4. True Grit / Get Down! (5:14)
5. Chasing the Bullet (2:23)
6. Crack House Cacophony (3:07)
7. Sitdown (1:57)
8. The Boys Hide the Gun / Nicky Comes Clean (2:57)
9. I Belong to Him (1:37)
10. Equal Measures (1:13)
11. Dez and Edele's (5:45)
12. Fire Fight (1:18)
13. A Mother's Instinct (7:49)
14. You're An American (1:15)
15. I Knew This Kid... / The Killing Ground (3:40)
16. Nobody Knows Nobody / Priceless / Drive to Brighton Beach (3:57)
17. Iced! (11:28)
18. Aftermath / Across the Pulaski Skyway (2:10)
19. MacDaddy / T, I'm Coming Home (4:21)
20. I Was Always the Real Joey (2:43)
21. A Family United (:53)
22. End Credits (2:17)