Customer Reviews

The Spirit: Original Motion Picture Score

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A dark, highly-stylized super-hero action film, written and directed by comic book legend Frank Miller, The Spirit stars Gabriel Macht as rookie cop Denny Colt who, having been killed in the line of duty, returns from the dead to fight crime in Central City as the mysterious, shadowy Spirit. In this adventure, The Spirit locks horns with two master criminals: The Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson), as super-villain who wants to wipe Central City off the map, and Sand Saref (Eva Mendes), a sexy femme fatale who seduces and marries wealthy men, has them killed, and uses their money to fund her crime empire. The film, which also stars Scarlet Johansson, was shot in moody black and white using green-screen technology, but failed to truly set the box office alight. The music for The Spirit is by David Newman, tackling his first semi-serious movie in quite a while - probably since The Affair of the Necklace in 2001 - and his first super-hero score since The Phantom in 1996. Miller asked Newman to provide "elements of "40s jazz sound combined with iconic heroic music, and even a touch of the spaghetti western", which has resulted in a eclectic, occasionally disjointed, but generally entertaining score that sadly never quite lives up to its promise. The "Spirit/Main Title" is actually very good: a dark, brooding overture, all rumbling pianos and racing strings, and which incorporates a harmonica and a sultry solo trumpet in a nod to the aforementioned Ennio Morricone spaghetti westerns to excellent effect, and actually sounds like a long-lost cousin of Danny Elfman's Spider-Man music. Unfortunately, the score never quite reaches these heights again: much of the rest of the score is given over to suspenseful mood music enlivened by touches of sultry, dirty-sounding saxophone-led jazz ("Enter Silken Floss"), and a couple of moments of lively and blustery action music ("Just a Fight", "You're An Accident", "Spirit Finds Sand", "Shootout" ). The main romantic theme for the love-hate relationship between The Spirit and Sand Saref, which has a faint Horner vibe and even a hint of David's brother Thomas Newman, first appears in "Egg On My Face", and by the time it gets to "Spirit Kisses Sand" has grown into a wonderfully melodramatic piece which rises to quite glorious romantic orchestral heights, making it one of the album's few high spots. There is also an eerie, wordless soprano for the character Lorelei that is performed by Newman's 19-year-old daughter Diana, a vocal major at USC, and appears in cues such as "Lorelei, Angel of Death" and "Lorelei, You're Mine". Much of the rest of the time, however, The Spirit is curiously uninvolving, standing at odds to the kind of inventive and enthralling music we know Newman is capable of writing. It's frustrating because - like he did on Serenity back in 2005 - he has been given a large canvas on which to create something glorious, and done nothing more than paint-by-numbers.

Where is "Falling In Love Again" by Christina Aguilera its the best music in the movie. Guess I won't be buying this.

The first trailer I saw for The Spirit was both a deterrent and intriguing. I didn't like how it looked so much like Sin City(which is the films biggest problem); But I was surprised that it used the Main Title from The Untouchables by Ennio Morricone. A few trailers later and I learned that David Newman was scoring the film. I like David Newman, who in my opinion is a very underrated composer, so my curiosity was again piqued.

I saw the film last week and was happily surprised that Newman followed the same basic feel as Morricone's score. The harmonica is used heavily throughout the music and the mix with the brass is again similar. The main theme is nice but not outstanding, and some of the incidental music is quite good.

This score will not supplant The Phantom as his best work but it was refreshing that at least in terms of score, Frank Miller allowed Newman to do something slightly old fashioned.

The track listing is: 1.Spirit/Main Titles 2.Lorelai "Angel of Death"
3.Enter Silken Floss-Octopus Kicks 4.Just a Fight 5."You're An Accident"
6.Spirit Reflects 7."Egg On My Face" 8.Sand/Octopus Lair 9."I am Sorely Disappointed" 10.Spirit Finds Sand/ Falling/ Hung Up(one of my faves)11.Plaster of Paris Dance 12.Spirit and Plaster Run 13.Lorelai "You're Mine"/Spirit Wants 14.Stand Off/Spirit Just Keeps Coming 15.Shootout 16.Octopus Buys It 17.Spirit Kisses Sand 18.It's You I Love/She is My City


There is no Christina Pop Song at the end and I noticed track 7 should really be "Spirit Reflects". At least that is the music I thought was playing during the flashback in the film.

If you like David Newman or comic book movie soundtracks, Then I whole heartedly recommend The SPIRIT.

First off, know that this album is a CD-R and not a commercially manufactured CD. I actually wouldn't have made the purchase had I know this and feel that AMAZON could have better advertised this fact (they reveal this, not in the "Product Details" portion [where it clearly reads "Audio CD"], but, rather, in the "Editorial Reviews" section.) Unlike CD's, which can last a lifetime, CD-R media is not an acceptable, nor collectible, form of media for archiving music, as the product will definitely have a short shelf life and will, inevitably, decay with time.

This aside, David Newman has written a very competent score that is also much requested return of the composer to a more serious and dramatic side of his composing. Having been reserved to more comedic chores in the last decade, it is quite refreshing that we hear Newman get dark and gritty for a change. However, for all the fun that it seems like we are in for, seeing as the material screams for music that is bold, daring and dramatic, the composer appears to just barely get there. I kept waiting for the score to explode, but it feels as though that he has the breaks on throughout the entire score. This is unfortunate, as Newman has shown in the past, with such films as HOFFA, ANASTASIA and most recently the scfi epic, SERENITY, that he can write exciting and dramatic adventure scores. I must also add that I was surprised at how much this soundtrack didn't sound like Newman at all and lacks a lot of the personality that makes his music stand out. Sadly, and to this last point, THE SPIRIT feels more like the composer being hired to sound like someone else. Namely; Danny Elfman... which isn't a bad thing, but I would rather hear what David Newman would sound like scoring this film.

All in all, not a bad score, just not and exciting one. One could do a lot worse, but lets just hope that it leads to the composer doing more scores like this one. Just more exciting and original. :)

I'm tempted to get this as I enjoyed the movie and the music but I'd like to see a song listing first. For example - is the end credits song by Christian Aguilera on this CD or is it just the movie music? The music reminded me a lot of the music in the early Batman films by Danny Elfman - in fact I thought it was him doing the music for this film too until I saw the credits. Anyway - I'll get it soon.