MURDER AT 1600

CHRISTOPHER YOUNG

Rating:

Original Review: Taking and building upon the film's interesting premise of a murder being committed at the address 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue - also known as The White House - Christopher Young composed this slick, interesting, engaging thriller score, one of his first attempts at breaking out of independent film and into mainstream studio cinema. As a precursor to the likes of Hard Rain and Entrapment, one can easily recognise Young's fluid action style and innovative orchestration techniques - as well as his great gift for writing memorable themes.

Directed by Dwight H. Little and starring Wesley Snipes as a Washington DC homicide detective, the plot of Murder at 1600 focuses around the discovery of a beautiful woman's body in a bathroom inside the White House, and the ensuing investigation into who pulled the trigger and why. As the plot thickens and the net tightens, Snipes finds himself pointing the finger of suspicion at a number of people who don't like being pointed at, including oval office aide Alan Alda, sinister secret agent Daniel Benzali, and even the President's son Tate Donovan.

As the film centres mainly in and around the world of high stakes politics, Young employs a number of musical techniques often associated with "patriotism", making special use of snare drums and muted brass. His main theme is a recurring three-note cello motif surrounded by a wash of irritable strings and a haunting solo saxophone, which is painstakingly plotted, carefully spaced out, and worked into several of the score's main cues, especially the 'Main Title', the action cue 'Body Politics', 'Martini Weeni', and towards the end of the excellent finale, 'Murder at 1600'. The quiet, jazzy love theme for the blossoming relationship between Snipes and fellow cop Diane Lane makes its appearance in 'Allegiance', expressed through a high-range piano and vibrato strings, while the all-too-brief 'Union Jack' contains a superb string elegy which brings happy comparisons to the classic Murder In The First, and which is recapitulated at the start of the conclusive track before swelling into a big, patriotic fanfare finale.

Moody, dissonant tension-building forms a great deal of the rest of the underscore, with several cues filled with nothing more than creeping strings and gently bubbling pianos in an attempt to place the listener (and the viewer) in a state of unease. There are action cues too, such as 'Tin Soldier', 'She Never Really Was', 'Turtledove' and the superbly-named 'Oval Room Rumba', which are typified by neurotic stabs from the cellos and basses, rumbling pianos and an incessant ticking from the percussion section. However, the whole thing has an unmistakable Youngian touch to it, with fleeting moments that briefly awaken dormant memories of older scores including Copycat, The Fly 2, and even the Norma Jean and Marilyn.

Unusually for a Young score, Murder at 1600 did not receive any kind of soundtrack release when the film first opened in early 1997. Almost a year later, Chris got together with Intrada boss Douglass Fake to press this limited edition, 50 minute composer promo, which formed part of the same batch as Hush and Urban Legend. As with those other excellent works, Murder at 1600 is getting rarer and more valuable as time goes by, but unlike other "limited editions", this one is well worth taking a bit of extra effort to track down. Although in-roads are now being made, it constantly surprises me that Chris Young has been labouring away in low-budget hell for so long without being noticed, despite writing score after score of great music for awful movies that didn't deserve him.

Track Listing: Running Time: 50 minutes 02 seconds

Intrada CD-96006 (1997)

Music composed by Christopher Young. Conducted by Pete Anthony. Orchestrations by Pete Anthony and Christopher Young. Recorded and mixed by Robert Fernandez. Album produced by Christopher Young and Douglass Fake.

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