JCVD, the surprise hit film starring Belgian action star Jean-Claude van Damme as himself, features an infectious big band score that will make fans of the of 1970s action thriller scoring smile and dance. This is Movie Score Media's second album with Luxemburg's most prominent film composer and jazz musician, Gast Waltzing (George and the Dragon), but this score is perhaps the complete opposite of that grand symphonic work. The strikingly bouncy main theme, which appears in several different versions, is juxtaposed with bleak string suspense, improvised jazz trumpet parts and percussive action scoring...

I'm a fan of soundtracks and of big band, however the big band soundtrack to JCVD did nothing for me.

A lot of the beats sounded rather cliched - like tracks you've heard before in private detective and '70s rogue cop movies. While they may provide atmosphere and mood settings for the film, as a standalone soundtrack the majority of the tracks just sounds like background cues.

I was also surprised to hear that the track 'Premiere Liberation' opens with what sounds like an almost note for note reworking of a track from Alan Silvestri's score for Back to the Future 2.

While I'm sure the soundtrack works well in the background of the film, there's just not enough weight here for it to flourish as a standalone work. Interesting, but the sort of thing you'll only listen to a handful of times.

4

Darren Rea