Last Chance Harvey (Original Motion Picture Score)

Album Review

Dickon Hinchliffe, a founding member of Tindersticks, is carving out a second career as a film score composer (his previous efforts including Forty Shades of Blue, Keeping Mum, and Married Life), and he cuts another slice with his music for writer/director Joel Hopkins' autumnal romantic comedy Last Chance Harvey, starring Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson. As heard on this soundtrack album, Hinchliffe's twenty-seven-and-a-half minutes of musical cues use lightly strummed acoustic guitar and gently played piano melodies over sweetly swelling strings (courtesy of the FILMharmonic Orchestra Prague) to augment the love-late-in-life theme of the film. Often, the music sounds just one step — and a sensitive lyric — from developing into a pop/rock ballad. Sandrine's end credit song "Where Do We Go" takes that extra step. Also included is a neo-rockabilly tune, "I'm a Mean, Mean, Mean Son of a Gun," by Kitty, Daisy & Lewis, used as source music in the film.