Road to Perdition

Barnes & Noble

Director Sam Mendes and composer Thomas Newman, who collaborated on the Academy Award-winning American Beauty, reunite for Road to Perdition, the Depression-era story of a hit man (Tom Hanks) working for an Irish gang leader (Paul Newman). In recent years, Thomas Newman -- a four-time Oscar nominee (American Beauty, Little Women, The Shawshank Redemption, Unstrung Heroes) -- has emerged as one of the most exciting young composers in film. He only adds to the excitement with Road to Perdition, a musical mosaic juxtaposing hot jazz with Irish-flavored melodies and dark symphonic themes. Newman employs bagpipes and a banjo along with a full orchestra on "Rock Island, 1931," a sweeping yet somber piece followed by a solo flute with responding brass and harp. While he continues that meditative tone on "Wake," he changes his tune on the tense, ominous "Murder," with its cascading chimes and muted, rising timpani. A sense of loneliness permeates the score and is effectively stated in "Virgin Mary," in which a solo piano is joined by strings. Amid these shadowy and powerful themes, jazz classics such as Fletcher Henderson & Orchestra's "Queer Notions" add the requisite period flavoring. On the closing track, actors Hanks and Newman perform "Perdition," a brief, intimate piano duet written by John M. Williams. It's an affecting coda to this powerful score. Andrew Velez

All Music Guide

Thomas Newman has a talent for composing disquieting little motifs played on unusual instruments (think of his theme music for the television series Six Feet Under), and he puts it to use in his score for the Depression-era gangster film Road to Perdition. Director Sam Mendes, who called Newman in to work on American Beauty, which earned him an Academy Award nomination, brings him back for a similar role here. Even discounting the inclusion of period (Fletcher Henderson's "Queer Notions," the Chicago Rhythm Kings' "There'll Be Some Changes Made") and period-sounding ("Someday Sweetheart" by the Charleston Chasers) source music, this is a long soundtrack, but it is one consisting of small and subtle effects. Newman likes dissonance, but he places it unobtrusively within quiet passages, so that it creates odd and comic tones. He is also capable of writing more conventional cues, such as "Dirty Money," with its martial percussion and contrasting sections carried by strings and brass, but it is the dark, slow-paced pieces that dominate this score. William Ruhlmann