Hard Rain, as directed by Mikael Salomon, is a high-action crime thriller concerning an
armored car heist, set against the backdrop of an impending flood which threatens a sleepy
Midwestern river town. According to the director, "Hard Rain is not your usual
disaster movie. it's an action movie, it's a thriller. It's about a heist, and the choices
people make. It's about redemption."
Emmy-nominated composer Christopher Young was
tapped to score Hard Rain, an appropriate choice for a film with such high levels
of both intensity and technical achievement. Young has displayed an eclectic reach in the
varied subjects for which he has written in the past (Murder At 1600,
The Man Who Knew Too Little, Norma
Jean & Marilyn), but he is best appreciated for his scores for horror and
suspense films, successes which include Hellraiser, Hellbound, Jennifer 8 and Copycat.
The most recent film to benefit from Young's
edgy, often unnerving music, Hard Rain, unfolds in something like real time,
spanning one night from sunset until dawn. During the course of that time, the town is in
the process of being flooded, having already been evacuated when the film opens. In
keeping with the vast scale of devastation depicted in Hard Rain, Young wrote for a
very large orchestral ensemble, with woodwinds grouped in threes, along with three
trumpets, three trombones and tuba; another, more unusual aspect of the brass section was
a compliment of eight french horns. Young explained that his decision to go with a
larger-than-ordinary brass section was suggested by the omnipotent power of the water. For
added impact, Young pitted his orchestral charts against prerecorded synthetic percussion
grooves, in addition to six percussionists playing live. The other featured instrument in
the score was the chromatic harmonica, its reedy timbre emblematic of the American
heartland which is the setting for Hard Rain; it was played for the most part by
studio stalwart Toots Thielemans, whose name is virtually synonymous with that instrument.
Of his musical blueprint for the film, Young
says, "You'll hear in the score that there's not that much of the characters'
internal lives represented in my music. It's all very surface, in terms of trying to give
brute strength to the film. There are a lot of chase scenes, with the good guys chasing
the bad guys and vice versa; the music doesn't really address character development.
However, there are a handful of intervals when the music slows down and deals with
momentary sadness, but that's not something that's stressed. There are two predominant
themes. One, that's first stated by the eight French horns in the main title, refers to
the 'omnipotent power of water' theme previously mentioned, the 'Don't mess with Mother
Nature' theme. The second theme is played by the chromatic harmonica and represents Morgan
Freeman and his band of bad guys.
"Hard Rain was new territory for
me, something that I hadn't done before. I've done action films previously, but never one
of quite this monumental a scale. it's a great film, and I'm thrilled to be a part of it.
When I was hired, though, it was apparent that there wasn't any music that I had
previously written that could work as a temp score for the film. So, in that respect, they
took a shot with me as something of an unknown quantity." The disc which you now hold
proves that the filmmakers made the right choice; having already described the nether
regions of the human psyche so well in his music, Christopher Young is obviously the right
composer to confront the dark side of Nature itself.
