I, the Jury

Music by Bill Conti

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Based on Mickey Spillane´s book, I the Jury (1982) was a B production more consistent than the average. But in atempt to make a neo-noir, not everything went as it should (Armand Assante as Mike Hammer?!?) and the result is halfway between classical noir aesthetics and explicit contemporary display.

The soundtrack tried to follow that neo-noir concept and delivered an output between the jazz tradition and dubious contemporary inserts as guitars disco music and electronic decorations. The intention was to overcome a musical model of the 70s. In this aesthetic interval for policial cinema – before the techno-symphonic music of Michael Kamen and Hans Zimmer redefine de genre – Conti´s lead to jazz as musical language for the score. He also aims to other directions as the pop-jazzy dynamism of the main theme (Main Title), modernist passages (the piano in Closet Cache, for example), big band sound (Michael Cab Ride, Concrete Chase Conclusion) or the synthesizers in Two Guard Takedown. There´s even reference to the surprise stingers that obviously reference the noir soundtracks from the 40´s. The result of so many quotation and reference is a rich work, fluent and quite fun, but with the feeling that not everything is in right place. But I the Jury, film and music, is one of those cases wherein sympathy overcomes the cinematic quality. In other words, it is a B movie.