Search - Terence Blanchard :: 25th Hour (Original Score)

Spike Lee's powerful rumination on the last 24 hours of freedom of a young convicted felon (Edward Norton) before he serves a seven-year prison sentence that will forever change his life is charged with melancholy regrets--and slim hopes of redemption. Longtime Lee collaborator Terence Blanchard's haunting score was deservedly nominated for a Golden Globe for the stark, sophisticated way it colors a challenging story with music that's at once haunting and achingly introspective. Blanchard's orchestral music here may at first seem like his most obvious bowing to symphonic film-scoring traditions. But as it masterfully turns on a difficult emotional axis of despair and apprehension, its sad string passages and wordless arias can evoke both the Celtic and the Middle Eastern, then melt into loping jazz signatures in a heartbeat. It's a brooding, elegantly sophisticated soundtrack that pays only occasional tribute to Blanchard's rich jazz accomplishments, but one that dramatically underscores his true range and dramatic potential as a film composer. --Jerry McCulley