A Civil Action
How would you like to pinch-hit for Mark McGwire? Danny Elfman reportedly faced a similar dilemma withA Civil Action: he stepped in to score Steven Zaillian's adaptation of Jonathan Harr's bestseller when the legendary composer Ennio Morricone bowed out. Elfman's score is an amalgam of a number of modern influences: edgy, percussive minimalism, haunting, effective choral flourishes, and electronically generated/altered elements are combined with a spare use of the orchestra to create a work that relies more on mood than on melody. The score's atmospherics may occasionally recall music by other modern film composers (Stewart Copeland and Thomas Newman come to mind), but Elfman (with help from long-time arrangement collaborator Steve Bartek) ultimately leaves his own distinct stamp on it.--Jerry McCulley