MOVIE MUSIC UK

Original Review by Jonathan Broxton

The Hill is a biographical sports drama directed by Jeff Celentano, which tells the true story of Rickey Hill, a young boy growing up in Texas in the early 1970s who dreams of becoming a baseball player despite wearing leg braces and suffering from a degenerative spinal disease. His father, a strict but kind pastor, tries to dissuade young Rickey from following his baseball dreams as he is worried that the physical toll of the game will result in him suffering further injuries, but Rickey persists, and eventually catches the eye of a legendary Major League Baseball scout who encourages him to try out to play for the Montreal Expos. The film was written by Angelo Pizzi – the screenwriter of such classic sports dramas as Hoosiers and Rudy – and contains many of the rousing, overcoming-the-odds touchstones that those iconic films featured. It stars Colin Ford as Rickey, who is supported by screen icons including Dennis Quaid, Scott Glenn, and Bonnie Bedelia.

The score for The Hill is by composer Geoff Zanelli, who continues to impress me with each new score of his I hear. While some of his work of late has been for lower profile movies, mostly comedies and horrors, I personally feel that Zanelli excels when he is given a full orchestra and told to write something thematic and emotional; he did this on his Emmy winning mini-series Into the West back in 2005, he did it on scores like The Pacific, The Odd Life of Timothy Green, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Christopher Robin, and especially Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, and he’s done it again here. It’s interesting, also, making the connection between this film and screenwriter Pizzo’s earlier films Rudy and Hoosiers, because there is a definite lineage from Jerry Goldsmith’s work on those films to Zanelli’s work here – that warm, rich, rousing Americana, which initially has a homespun and intimate feel, but then also takes every opportunity to raise its voice and celebrate sporting triumph.

The score was recorded in Macedonia with the F.A.M.E.’s. Project orchestra, and Zanelli gives it and conductor Oleg Kondratenko a real workout. There’s a wonderful sense of anticipation and destiny in the opening cue “The Hill,” which sparkles with piano lines underneath the strings, and eventually opens up into a lovely, hopeful main theme for the full orchestra, before reducing back down to homespun guitars in its finale. What I like about the music here is that it’s entirely uncynical; these days you often get scores like these that are underpinned with a touch of sarcasm, as if they know they are old-fashioned and cheesy and they want you to know they know it too. Zanelli isn’t doing that here. This music is beautiful because that’s just what it is, and there’s no underhandedness to it at all.

This evocation of wholesome Americana continues throughout much of the rest of the score. “Young Rickey” is notable for its increased emphasis on woodwinds. I really like the country guitars and sense of playfulness in “That’s Gonna Be You One Day,” as well as the subsequent “Operation Rickey Hill” which takes the same orchestrations but makes them a little more emotionally charged . “False Idols” builds to a lovely finale through a bank of tremolo strings backed by heraldic horns, and “I Stay Down Here, I’m Dead” builds and builds and has a sense of can-do spirit, optimism, and purpose.

On the other hand, cues like “Zero Smoke Breaks” and the tumultuous (and unexpectedly Horner-esque!) “Don’t Wanna Make You Suffer” are often a little darker, and have a little more emphasis on electronics, which adds a more introspective attitude to the orchestra. In a similar vein, cues like “You Do Not Deserve James Hill,” “Goodbye,” “Calm Your Mind,” the gorgeous solo fiddle-led “Consequences,” and the superb “Bring Down Goliath” have a more emotional aura to them, and sometimes adopt a bittersweet tone that speaks to the more tragic elements of the film relating to Rickey’s disabilities, or his fractious relationship with his father. Throughout it all, though, Zanelli maintains an identifiably tonal, thematic, melodic core, that keeps the music appealing. Some of these melodies have a distinctly hymnal quality to them which I really like, and which of course fits in perfectly with the film’s central faith-based ideas.

“Off He Goes” has a wonderfully enthusiastic arrangement of the main theme that almost feels like an action cue – full of fresh-faced hopefulness and positivity – and this style continues directly on into what I consider the highlight sequence of the entire score, beginning with the outstanding “I’ll Prevail.” This cue begins with a simple piano-based statement of the main theme, but then picks up a sense of pride and determination through rhythmic percussion textures, and gradually more symphonic orchestrations. This increase in emotional depth comes through even more in the carefully celebratory “Breakin’ Windshields,” the emphatic “Go Get ‘Em,” the rousingly patriotic “It’s Your Time,” and the unashamedly triumphant “Designated Hitter”.

After some intense drama in “Get Up,” during which Zanelli enhances the stakes with terrific, purposeful rhythmic string writing, the conclusive “Father and Son” is where the emotional shackles come off and Zanelli ends the score with a superb moment of musical catharsis that celebrates sporting excellence in the face of adversity, and acknowledges the healing of the relationship between Rickey and his father. Zanelli remains, for reasons which I will never understand, underrated when it comes to this type of writing, but The Hill shows just how good he can be when he is given this sort of opportunity.

The Hill is an excellent score which tugs at the heartstrings in all the right ways. It’s manipulative without being maudlin, beautiful without overdoing it, and celebrates warm Americana without falling too far down the Aaron Copland hole. Anyone who enjoyed Jerry Goldsmith’s work on Hoosiers and Rudy, as well as other similar scores like Randy Newman’s The Natural, William Ross’s The Game of Their Lives, Mark Isham’s Miracle, and the like, will find The Hill very much to their liking too.

Buy the Hill soundtrack from the Movie Music UK Store

Track Listing:

• The Hill (2:18)
• Young Rickey (1:58)
• Zero Smoke Breaks (2:29)
• That’s Gonna Be You One Day (1:56)
• False Idols (0:59)
• You Do Not Deserve James Hill (1:00)
• Goodbye (1:31)
• The Heaven I Know (2:28)
• I Stay Down Here, I’m Dead (1:41)
• Calm Your Mind (2:38)
• Dreaming of the Majors (1:53)
• Consequences (2:41)
• Off He Goes (1:02)
• Sure You Ain’t Cheatin’? (3:10)
• Don’t Wanna Make You Suffer (5:12)
• Operation Rickey Hill (1:38)
• You Are Gonna Paralyze Him (1:50)
• It’ll Take Time (2:16)
• Bring Down Goliath (3:12)
• I’ll Prevail (2:16)
• Breakin’ Windshields (2:44)
• How Many Miracles Do You Need? (2:24)
• Go Get ‘Em (1:44)
• It’s Your Time (2:26)
• Designated Hitter (2:05)
• Get Up (3:48)
• Father and Son (3:45)

Running Time: 63 minutes 04 seconds

Zanellitivity Music (2023)

Music composed by Geoff Zanelli. Conducted by Oleg Kondratenko. Orchestrations by Òscar Senén and Nacho Cantalejo. Additional music by Zak McNeil and Nicolas Salinardi. Recorded and mixed by XXXX. Edited by XXXX. Album produced by Geoff Zanelli.