The Saint 1997 Soundtrack Download
Vida Hubbert
The Saint is a 1997 American thriller film directed by Phillip Noyce, written by Jonathan Hensleigh and Wesley Strick, and starring Val Kilmer in the title role, with Elisabeth Shue and Rade Šerbedžija. The plot of the film revolves around the title character who is a high-tech thief and master of disguise, who becomes the anti-hero while using the moniker of various saints. He paradoxically lives in the underworld of international industrial theft and espionage. The film was a modest financial success with a worldwide box office of $169.4 million, rentals of $28.2 million, and continuous DVD sales.
It is loosely based on the character of Simon Templar created by Leslie Charteris in 1928 for a series of books published as "The Saint", which ran until 1983. The Saint character has also featured in a series of Hollywood films made between 1938 and 1954, a 1940s radio series starring Vincent Price (and others) as Templar, a popular British television series of the 1960s starring Roger Moore, a 1970s series starring Ian Ogilvy, and a 1989 series of telefilms starring Simon Dutton.
At the Saint Ignatius Orphanage, a rebellious boy named John Rossi refers to himself as "Simon Templar" and leads fellow orphans in an attempt to run away. He tries to bid farewell to a girl named Agnes with a kiss, but they are caught and she accidentally falls from a balcony to her death.
Using the alias "Thomas More", Simon poses as a Boer traveller to seduce Emma, and steals the formula after a one-night stand. Tretiak realizes the formula is incomplete and sends Ilya and his henchmen to kill Simon, who narrowly escapes. Simon returns to Russia to demand his payment from Tretiak while disguised as Tretiak himself. A heartbroken Emma reports the theft of her formula to Inspectors Teal and Rabineau of Scotland Yard, who inform her Simon is a wanted international thief.
Reuniting with Emma, Simon returns her formula and they start a secret relationship. She presents her formula to the world at a news conference, which Simon attends in disguise and escapes Teal and Rabineau when they spot him in the crowd. Driving away, he hears a news broadcast that $3 billion was donated to the Red Cross, Salvation Army, and the United Nations Children's Fund; it is implied that Simon, who had access to Tretiak's accounts, gave the money anonymously and established a non-profit foundation led by Dr. Botvin to develop the cold-fusion technology.
Film adaptations of Leslie Charteris' anti-hero Simon Templar (The Saint) date back to the late 1930s when RKO Radio Pictures launched a popular series of B-movies with a succession of different actors playing the lead role. After that, save for two unsuccessful French attempts at launching new film series, the character was confined to television: The Saint, a 1960s series starring Roger Moore; Return of the Saint, a 1970s updating starring Ian Ogilvy; a failed 1987 pilot for American TV, The Saint in Manhattan starring Andrew Clarke; and a set of feature-length made-for-television adventures co-produced in the United Kingdom, Canada, France, West Germany, Australia in 1989 starring Simon Dutton. Of these, the Moore series remained the definitive television adaptation.
In the mid-1980s, tabloid gossip newspapers such as the National Enquirer reported that Moore was planning to produce a new Saint movie, with Pierce Brosnan (then known for playing the Templar-influenced character Remington Steele on TV and later of James Bond fame) being considered for the role, though nothing came of this project.
The reference work The Saint: A Complete History by Burl Barer (McFarland 1992) was written at a time when another set of plans were under way to launch a new Saint film series, which would have been faithful to the original writings of Leslie Charteris and feature characters from the original books. This project also failed.
Providing a link to both the 1960s The Saint TV series and the later Return of the Saint revival of the 1970s, Robert S. Baker, the producer of both series, was brought in an executive producer of the film.
In a 1997 interview with Des O'Connor for his ITV show, Hugh Grant says he passed on the role after a meeting with Noyce because he didn't like the director's approach to the character. Hugh Grant, Kenneth Branagh, Mel Gibson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Christian Slater, George Clooney, Kevin Costner, Johnny Depp and Daniel Day-Lewis all refused the role. Val Kilmer was cast after declining to reprise the role of Batman/Bruce Wayne in Joel Schumacher's Batman & Robin and the script was rewritten by Wesley Strick to suit his style.
Strick's rewrite relocated the action to London and Oxford and merged two villains together by having Tretiak running for president himself rather than endorsing a puppet candidate. Kilmer was constantly pressing for more disguises in the film, although Paramount wanted to keep that idea for their Mission: Impossible franchise. The Saint, as devised by Charteris in the 1930s, used crude disguises instead of the sophisticated ones shown in this film.
Unusually for an action star of the time (as in heroes played by Steven Seagal, Bruce Willis or Mel Gibson), this Saint refrained from killing and even the main villains live to stand trial. Charteris' version had no qualms about taking another life.
The novelization features an alternate version in which Emma lives and Simon and Ilya still battle on the chandelier. In the end the producers decided to cut Emma's death scene and Templar's battle with Ilya, inserted footage of the Tretiaks being arrested and filmed a new epilogue at Oxford. (Footage from the original ending features prominently in the film's trailer.)
The film's soundtrack album, The Saint: Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack included many songs from the electronica age. Aside from Duran Duran and the Sneaker Pimps, recording artists included Orbital, Moby, Fluke, Luscious Jackson, The Chemical Brothers, Underworld, Daft Punk, David Bowie, Dreadzone, Duncan Sheik, Everything but the Girl and the theme "Polaroid Millenium" by British musicians Su Goodacre and Lee Knott (alias "Superior") which also played during the final credits.
On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 30% based on 46 reviews. The websites consensus states: "The Saint is watchable thanks to Val Kilmer and Elisabeth Shue, but the film's muddled screenplay stretches credulity". On Metacritic the film has a score of 50 out of 100 based on 22 reviews, indicating "Mixed or average reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B+ on scale of A to F.
Edward Guthmann of the San Francisco Chronicle notes Kilmer is the "master of disguises", as "Templar's genius, like Kilmer's, involves slipping in and out of skins rapidly and offering only the slightest hint at the person who hides beneath the charade... Kilmer dons 12 disguises in all, polishes them with impeccable accents and pliable postures", with Shue's character offering "the same sympathetic dignity she brought to Leaving Las Vegas". Liam Lacey of The Toronto Globe and Mail said The Saint is "More entertaining than Mission: Impossible or the last Bond film GoldenEye. It brings back the humour and sangfroid that makes the genre work". Todd McCarthy of Variety called it a "suspenser that doesn't taste bad at first bite but becomes increasingly hard to swallow".
Pop music tends to evolve slowly, gradually swaying from one trend to the next without sharp turns or dramatic spikes. Some years, though, you can listen to the radio and really feel the ground shifting, if not outright quaking, beneath your feet. 1997 was one of those years.
Not much to say about this one, except that yes, there was a time when JAY-Z made Bad Boy-sounding radio jams with Players Ball-themed music videos, just because the producers of the Sprung soundtrack asked him to. And yes, it was decently jiggy.
An impeccable, two-stepping duet between a man and a pair of muted trumpets, a love song to the archangel of love and to dance music in general, beautiful enough to make the heavens weep. Unsurprisingly, it was far too British to go anywhere in the U.S., but in the U.K. it went top 40 and became something of a house music standard, even getting covered this year by underground soul phenom Sampha at the BBC Live Lounge.
This is a fascinating and spiritually invigorating slice of musical experimentation that transcends the boundaries between artistic disciplines. Formed in 1988, Austin's Deep Listening Band holds the environment in which music is heard on roughly equal footing with the performance itself. It's a somewhat unorthodox approach that makes perfect sense if you think about it for five seconds. Their abstract, evocative compositions invite the listener to create his or her own soundscape. The band uses instruments ranging from accordion to didjeridoo to garden hose, not to mention the Long String Instrument. The latter is a 175-string apparatus that's played by walking between numbered lines on the floor that signify notes. Despite the music's esoteric pedigree, there are a lot of subtle intricacies going on here. Pauline Oliveros' "Epigraphs in the Time of AIDS" allows the musicians to weave their own unique aural memorial. The result is the same disparate flood of emotion one feels when viewing the AIDS Memorial Quilt. Ellen Fullman's "TexasTravelTexture" uses a similar musical approach to evoke images of endless West Texas roads. Although the listener must work to find meaning within this sonic collage, the payoff for the conscious explorer is heartening.
(3.5 stars) -- Greg Beets
Don't come running to this album by former
A-Ha bassist turned Austinite looking for falsetto happy-pop. Bgeberg has fashioned a low-throated, sincere set that merits both the words "adult" and "contemporary" without putting the two together to spell crap. Not quite a song cycle, this might be called a life cycle, with songs dedicated to his late great-aunt (the quiet, heartfelt "Never Hear That Laugh"), children (the appropriately playful "Sweet Little Angel"), and an assortment of other day-to-day relationships torn from daily life. Musically, this is a strong, varied collection, with sweet female duetists, haunting slide guitar, and on "We Have Grown," strong, soulful backup vocals that sound as though Malford Milligan took a jaunt to Norway without telling us. And just as I was thinking that this sounded like where Dire Straits should've pointed their sails after the first album, the phrase "water of life" comes up in the lyrics. Hmmm... In any case, Bgeberg's album compares favorably with any of our home-groan songwriters, and Michael Hall fans especially should eat this up.
(3.0 stars) -- Ken Lieck