Great Movie, horrendous score!

Rating: Null/10 (28 October 2003)

I loved this film, the acting was great; Tim Robbins surprised the heck out of me, Sean Penn was his usual magnificent self...Kevin Bacon and Laurence Fishburne solid as usual. I enjoyed the directing, the lighting, the bleakness of it all, but I could not STAND the score!
It was heavy handed, overbearing, and crested in ALL the wrong spots. I had a very hard time concentrating on the action in the scene because the music was so bad.
I'm thinking, who could have done this dreck? James Horner? Alan Silvestri? So I get home and look here on IMDB, and who is listed as composer?
Clint Eastwood himself.
Well that explains it. Vanity does not work in film score composition. I see that Clint has scored other films, but this one is horrid. This atmosphere of this film would have been much better served with Thomas Newman or Patrick Doyle, even Jerry Goldsmith.
This movie was well acted, well adapted from the novel, and well directed. But the music really detracted from this great film.