It seems reasonable to think that perhaps Christopher Young has contracted certain degenerative syndrome related with the creativity, when analyzing its last score for the Jon Amiel film Entrapment (1999). This conclusion is more than evident as soon as we appreciate the qualitative irregularity that has characterized the last years of his career: with the exception of Tales From The Hood (1995) and Head Above The Water (1996), his more exponential and more exceptional scores, the rest of his work is affected by a constant recurrence of compositive and instrumental solutions that, although in a beginning ingenious and adequate, have degenerated because of its systematic use in farce and plagiarism. It is possible that this pernicious syndrome is confused with what has been given in calling "own style"; on the other hand, I recognize that with the years, Young has been able to sharpen his technique and orchestration until the point that new composers have taken him as model and inspiration source for their own works, and there is no doubt that that abusive use to which I refer has conformed partly the way of composing of the author of Hellraiser (1987).The conception and development of the score of Entrapment comes from the same principles that Young was based to carry out the soundtracks of Hard Rain (1998) and Murder at 1600 (1997), that don't understand but the practice of an essentially symphonic music executed and ordinated in function of a selection of rhythms created in synthesizers. This music, of diffuse atonal tendencies and defined by the use of recurrent reasons and of those variable rhythms variable takes (at least in their structure) in Entrapment all its intensity: the electronic rhythms, however, goes to occupy a first plane, while the recurrent reasons disappear almost completely (with the exception that we find in Blackmail). This alteration is not arbitrary: the effect that Young pursues reforming the structure of his music, increasing the synthetic element above the acoustic one is to endow to the score with a necessary modernity, in clear allusion to the XXI century and the advanced technology that present the mechanical challenges that put in check Mac (Sean Connnery) and Gin (Catherine Zeta-Jones). This, on the other hand, acts against the own music, turning it excessively cold and practically lacking any coloring; only in the exotic scenarios breaks Young that aseptic climate and mechanic that dominates the work (The Dancing Jars, Kuala Lumpur), still without being able to eclipse the sensation that we are in front of a retreaded and volatile work, in front of a work, in definitive, not very interesting, intrascendent and scanty in ideas. D.R.C.
