The movie Drive was rescored recently by Zane Lowe and showed on BBC THREE. I will stand out from the crowd here by saying that I really didn't enjoy Drive, I found that it looked stylish and I enjoyed the colours and shadows, but overall the amount of praise that this film got was just way way way too overrated. The characters are boring (having your lead not talk much doesn't make him nessisarily interesting) the script could be written by a 5 year old, it takes references and snippets of inspiration from other much better movies without ever trying to disguise them or make them look new, and there are so many moments that just don't fit - If the majority of the film doesn't involve car chases, don't have your very first opening scene contain a full blown car chas sequence. Well anyway, atleast it was better than its obvious inspired film Hyena, though far less entertaining to watch throughout.
One thing I did like about it though was the music, and when I say that I mean maybe 2 songs, the rest just doesn't seem to work, especially playing a nice lovely charming song with a mother and son, and then 20 minutes later someone is being beaten by a hammer surrounded by strippers in very dark fashion. Suprisingly though I quite enjoyed the new rescoring, the title sequence song is not as good, it just doesn't work with the feel of the city, but some of the songs are incredibly well working. I'm glad to see The 1975 do a rescore in this and it works much better over the more domestic scene of the movie.
One thing especially that I liked about this re-edit is that they even added songs where there was no music originally, so long sections of silence (which I suppose Refn did for 'stylistic' importance, in reality they just bore the heck out of me) are now covered up with quite suspenseful and engaging music. Refn just doesn't seem to understand that silences shouldn't just be used at any opportunity, just like closeups. Silences when picked out carefully next to shots of explosive drama can stir on an emotional reaction (See Scorsese: The art of Silence).
Overall I think this is a great case study for sound and should be viewed by anybody who needs to understand the importance of using the correct music to the correct scene. I can only wonder whether or not if some of these songs were used in Drive that I might have prefered it a little bit more.