The Tourist (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) is the soundtrack album composed by James Newton Howard to the 2010 film The Tourist directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck and starring Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie. The album featured 21 tracks of Howard's score, with three songs performed by Gabriel Yared, Muse and Katie Melua was released on December 21, 2010, through the Varèse Sarabande label.
Contents
Background
The film score was initially set to be composed by Gabriel Yared, a friend of von Donnersmarck. Yared went on a four-month tour to Venice in order to know Depp and Jolie before creating a dance track. However, during the middle of the film's production, he was replaced by James Newton Howard. Yared had composed one musical piece "Dance in F" for the film. Howard pictured Venice as the inspiration for the film's musical palette and crafted a score that supplemented the storyline. The film also features, "Starlight" by the band Muse and "No Fear of Heights" by Katie Melua.
Reception
James Christopher Monger of AllMusic noted that Howard's score for The Tourist "strikes a nice balance between electronic-driven, modern heist cues and more traditional, James Bond-inspired espionage themes." Filmtracks wrote "Interestingly, the fluffy tone of The Tourist is in part perpetuated by Howard's choice to mix the orchestral elements far in front of the synthetic ones, another reason this score really sounds little like Salt [...] The album presentation is generous with Howard's material, including over an hour of it (perhaps unnecessarily). But the bonus of the album is hearing one retained cue from Yared's score at the end, a dance saturated with the same European sensibilities that Howard clearly emulated. In the end, one has to wonder if Yared's entire score would have worked just as well, if not better." Thomas Glorieux of Maintitles wrote "Either way The Tourist is an acceptable spy score and at times charming romantic score. And in my mind it is clear that the romantic music does outshine the suspenseful material, and this due to a most lovely romantic theme. So I guess most of you will want to stay to that side of the soundtrack."
Daniel Schweiger of AssignmentX wrote "From fun start to finish on our trip down the dangerously romantic byways of Venice, there's no denying the old-school charm that The Tourist's score has in spades, music that plays the glamorous stuff that stars like Jolie are made of." "This isn't a great album by any means, but it's very enjoyable; probably Howard's most enjoyable non-Shyamalan album in a long time." Tom Lynch of Newcity wrote "James Newton Howard's mawkish score lacks the retro wit seen in the eyewear, costumes and decor."
Justin Chang of Variety called it "an alternately jittery and swoony concoction by James Newton Howard". Matt Soergel of The Florida Times-Union wrote "James Newton Howard's score is sprightly and pleasingly retro." Mick LaSalle of SFGate called it a "mellow soundtrack". Christy Lemire of The Repository wrote "the score from James Newton Howard tends to play up the madcap hilarity, and the would-be romance, a bit too intrusively".
Personnel
Credits adapted from liner notes: