It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. So ends literary considerations for today. These days directors often change their minds at the last minute over what music they want in their films - while this has happened from time to time historically, digital editing techniques mean that films are very rarely "locked" by the time they find their way to the composer, and changes are needed as a matter of course late in the day. Increasingly, this leads to scores being thrown out completely or other composers being brought on board to write additional music: such was the case with The Tuxedo, the latest high-brow Jackie Chan movie, which had been scored by Christophe Beck until John Debney was brought in at the last minute to spruce things up.

Unusually, both composers' scores are presented on this album, presumably stretching to some tracks representing two composers' take on the same scene, which you may expect to be a fascinating exercise in seeing how different composers approach the same situation, but these days of mass-produced generica dominating the film music scene means that it is tricky to tell when Debney's music ends and Beck's begins (though looking at the album helps out in that regard).

Debney's music is slightly more electronic, modern-day James Bond stuff while Beck's is more melodic and perhaps slightly more attractive. Particular highlights are his take on the main title (track five) and his superb piece of action, "Swallow the Queen". John Debney's contribution sounds like it was written in a hurry - which it was - but still leaves room for a few moments of genuine quality. I especially like his main theme (heard to best effect in "Putting on Tux", but his action material (check out "Demolition Program") would seem to owe a huge debt to Lalo Schifrin's incomparably-superior Rush Hour scores. From both composers, the electronic music does little to impress, but it's still far preferable to the ambient techno nonsense that dominates films like this these days.

There is nothing in Beck's score to suggest it wouldn't work in the film, and indeed in a blind tasting, if you did manage to tell the two composers' work apart, you would almost certainly suggest that Beck's was the work of the more mature and experienced film composer so I'm not entirely sure why anyone would have rejected parts of his score. But then, I can only think of one or two cases of a replacement score being better than the one that was rejected.

All in all, the album is remarkably coherent given that it's written by two composers independently, and has enough fun stuff to recommend it, but having said that, it's fairly generic stuff. Debney gets slightly more of the 33 minutes of score on the album than Beck, but Beck probably leaves the larger impression.

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