(Warner)
I suppose it would be foolish to expect anything less than a good soundtrack from a Michael Mann film. After all, this is not only the guy who turned Miami Vice into a hit not just on television, but on radio as well - not to mention a man who had the ability to put a Clannad song into The Last of the Mohicans and have it come out well.
So, it's no surprise that the soundtrack to Heat is full of great music. The real surprise is where that music comes from. Scored by Elliot Goldenthal (who receive an Oscar nomination for his work on Interview With The Vampire), and featuring artists like Passengers and Moby, the soundtrack for Heat consists mainly of music that is either straight-out ambient or pretty damn close almost the whole time. In other words, it's like the soundtrack to the best episode of Miami Vice that was never made.
Of the twenty-one tracks on the album, eleven were scored by Goldenthal (three of those featuring Kronos Quartet). The remainder of the tracks, from Michael Brook's "Ultramarine" to Terje Rypdal's "Mystery Man" all capture the look and feel of Heat perfectly, providing a great background for the action in the film - which is really the bottom line when it comes to soundtracks in the first place.
The album's highlights outside of the Goldenthal score (which is quite good, by the way) include Lisa Gerrard's "Las Bas" and "Gloradin," as well "Ultramarine," "Mystery Man," and "Last Nite," also from Terje Rypdal. The best track on the album would have to be "God Moving Over The Face of the Waters" from Moby, a track that can bring forth an incredibly amount of inspiration, even when it's playing over a death scene, as it does in the film.
There are low points, but only two of them. "Always Forever Now" from the Brian Eno/U2 collaboration known as Passengers and "Armenia" by Einsturzende Neubauten both don't seem to work right, but for different reasons. "Always Forever Now" seems like it was added simply because of the names behind it, and "Armenia" is simply annoying.
But perhaps the real success of the album goes to Mann himself. He knows firsthand how to capture the spirit of a piece of film with a piece of music, and is willing to take risks that other directors wouldn't. For example, anyone who has seen the film will notice that there is no "rousing score" anywhere on the album, even though there is a five-minute gunfight. The reason for this is that, quite simply, a rousing score set in the dead center of the rest of the music on this disc would seem hopelessly out of place. Of course, it's only fitting that in the film, there isn't a rousing score, either. The five-minute gunfight is done totally without music, giving it a realism that is hard to ignore.
