The most expensive Arabic film ever made, the Saudi production 7 Dogs is an action thriller about Interpol trying to break a global drug trafficking network (led by Monica Bellucci!) It’s directed by Adil el Arbi and Bilall Fallah, best known for Bad Boys For Life, and their composer from that film, Lorne Balfe, is on-hand to provide another energetic score. The hour-long album is almost wall-to-wall action music, pausing only very occasionally to draw breath, and at times it’s really rather creative and frequently highly entertaining.
The earlier sections, starting right away in “360 Shootout”, have a real Bollywood kind of feel to them – fast and frenzied and with constant toe-tapping percussive energy, if you were so inclined then you could dance to them (I’ll remain seated but am happy to consume some poppadoms to mark the occasion). This particularly distinctive sound gets watered down a little as things move on and influences become a little more overtly Arabic (but it never entirely goes away and you really could dance to most of it). Perhaps it all becomes a little too exhausting by the end – and unusually for Balfe, there isn’t really a memorable theme running through it to tie everything together – but it’s great fun.
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