Awful underscoring?
The composer isn't credited on imdb, and I'm not about to rerun a DVD I've just put away in order to check the credits, but am I the only one who found the 'elevator musak' underscoring 'Bangkok Love Story' pestilentially AWFUL??? That and the embarassingly treacly song that popped up a couple of times, complete with clumsy, incoherent subtitles? As my partner observed (he too found the score egregiously distracting), the problem with the music was that the constantly-repeated melody of the main theme had the effect of tying all the plot elements together - when those elements didn't NEED to be tied together, and actually suffered from this clumsy aural linkage. It wasn't a score I can imagine anyone wanting to have on their iPod; let's turn with relief to the score for, say, 'Performance', which treats a similar theme (violent criminal -in the case of 'BLS' a hitman- becomes obsessively connected to a victim - in the case of 'Performance', Turner the unwitting rock musician/magician who conjures up some dangerous magick). Forty years on, 'Performance''s score remains extraordinarily potent, still evoking images from the movie because it was so organically a part of the film. I don't want to hear the 'Bangkok Love Story' score again, ever. The point I think I'm trying to make is that 'BLS' is shot in the grainy, hyperactive, wide-angled manner of a music video. So why score it with sappy soap opera pseudo-pop? There are plenty of smart young rock musicians in Thailand who'd've been more than happy to contribute the jagged urban rock soundtrack the movie so obviously needed.
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