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THE MAN WHO KILLED HITLER AND THEN THE BIGFOOT – Joe Kraemer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In 2015, in my review of the score for Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, I wrote the following paragraph about composer Joe Kraemer. “New York-born Kraemer first came onto the film music scene in 2000 as a 29-year old, scoring Christopher McQuarrie’s directorial debut, The Way of the Gun. Kraemer’s score for that film was so good, that he was immediately tipped to be the next ‘hot young composer’ in Hollywood, but instead Kraemer essentially disappeared for a decade, and by 2010 was getting by scoring low-budget straight-to-DVD action movies and the soft-core anthology series Femme Fatales for Cinemax. Then, in 2012, McQuarrie directed a second film, Jack Reacher, and to everyone’s surprise and delight Kraemer scored that film. The score for Jack Reacher was so good that everyone thought “finally, Kraemer’s career is back on track” … except, of course, Kraemer promptly disappeared again for another three years. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation is Kraemer’s third go-around at establishing himself as a major composer, and I hope beyond hope that it works this time, and that directors other than Christopher McQuarrie realize what a gem we have in him. Kraemer is too talented to be languishing on the sidelines, and I don’t want to have to type another version of this paragraph again in 2019.” Read more…
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – ROGUE NATION – Joe Kraemer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I have, in my head, a list of composers whose level of talent is directly inverse to the number and quality of films they are asked to score. Some of them are composers who used to get major assignments but have fallen off the radar of late: people like Bruce Broughton, Cliff Eidelman, Trevor Jones, and David Newman. Others are composers who, for whatever reason, have yet to make that major breakthrough despite having talent in abundance: people like Neal Acree, Scott Glasgow, Federico Jusid, Nuno Malo, and too many others to list here. For the longest time Joe Kraemer was on that list too, but with the release of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, I might finally be able to cross him off. The film is the latest action extravaganza starring Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, and others, as agents with the top-secret IMF espionage and counter-terrorism force, seeking to take down ‘the Syndicate’, a network of highly skilled operatives who are dedicated to establishing a new world order via an escalating series of terrorist attacks and disasters. The movie globe-trots from Belarus to Cuba, to Vienna, to Morocco, and finally the UK, with the usual array of breathtaking stunts; it is directed by Christopher McQuarrie, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of The Usual Suspects. Read more…
JACK REACHER – Joe Kraemer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Jack Reacher is a new action-thriller film directed by Christopher McQuarrie, based on the popular character created by author Lee Child. This film is based on the plot of the novel “One Shot”, and stars Tom Cruise in the title role as an ex-military investigator called in to help ambitious defense attorney Helen Rodin (Rosamund Pike), who sees something wrong with the apparently open-and-shut case of a former military sniper accused of killing five innocent civilians along Pittsburgh’s Allegheny River waterfront. Helped and hindered by dogged police detective Emerson (David Oyelowo) and district attorney Alex Rodin (Richard Jenkins) – Helen’s father and legal opponent – Reacher discovers that there is much more to the story than meets the eye, and that a shadowy figure known only as The Zec (Werner Herzog) may be behind it all. Director McQuarrie, still best known for winning an Oscar for writing The Usual Suspects in 1996, has crafted a tight, enjoyable, engrossing little thriller with several superb set-pieces and a labyrinthine plot that is both believable and unpredictable, while Cruise’s lead performance is a good one, full of charisma and cockiness, despite him being the physical opposite of the character in the novels. Read more…
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