City Hall: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Artist: Jerry Goldsmith
Label: Varese Sarabande
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Format: Soundtrack
Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1

UPC: 030206569926
EAN: 0030206569926
ASIN: B0000014YC

Release Date: 1996-02-13

City Hall: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Related Categories:

Movie Scores

| Soundtracks | Styles | Music

Movie Soundtracks

| Soundtracks | Styles | Music

General

| Soundtracks | Styles | Music

1990s

| By Decade | Soundtracks | Styles | Music

Tracks:

The Bridge
The Meet
The Hospital
When I Was A Kid
The Cabin
The King Maker
Old Friends
Swartz Is Dead
Think About It
The Report
Take A Vacation
Count On It

Similar Items:

...And Justice For All
Insomnia (Widescreen Edition)
Sea of Love (Collector's Edition)
Serpico (Widescreen Edition)
Scent of a Woman

Amazon.com

This complex 1996 drama directed by Harold Becker (Sea of Love) attempts to explore big-city corruption and the flexibility of what's right and wrong in the political arena. John Cusack (Say Anything) plays the senior aide to mayor John Pappas (Al Pacino), a popular and seasoned politician whose administration is threatened when what seems to be an accidental shooting of a child reveals a nest of corruption and lifelong personal debts that tests Cusack's loyalty to the man he thought he knew. Pacino turns in a finely textured performance as a man who has his own lofty ideals, but whose pragmatism sets in motion a series of events with tragic results. Cusack admirably captures the essence of someone polished and savvy at his job who must cope with fundamental disillusionment. This political thriller suffers at times from a lack of focus, but still offers an insightful and poignant treatise on the quagmire of politics in the modern age and the human toll it sometimes exacts. --Robert Lane

Customer Reviews:

City Hall.......2006-12-27

A decent and somewhat entertaining movie about political corruption in New York, this movie arguably would have been a total flop were it not for Pacino and Cusack. I feel that the amount of killing is a little excessive and lends to the general pradicability of the plot. It was worth watching once, but I doubt I'll ever feel compelled to do so again.

A Warm-up For L.A. Confidential.......2006-12-03

I think I agree with most critics who say that Jerry Goldsmith's score for "City Hall" is like a warm-up for "L.A. Confidential", and the tracks 'The Bridge' and 'The Meet' are proof of that. Although I have to admit that those two cues are the best of the CD, as well as 'Old Friends' and 'Count On It. The music certainly has that New York feel to it since the movie takes place there. Unfortunately, as for the rest of the album, it all sounds like there is no way to go; and it remains too quiet for my taste, possibly because the film itself is kinda dull in spite of Al Pacino's usual overperformance that keeps anybody awake. But then again, there is "L.A. Confidential"...

Politics and Injustice.......2006-09-10

This movie is the quintessential example of how politics and public opinion rules the day. Each of the actors in this criminal injustice movie are compelling. Cusack's plight is what endears him to the viewer--restive in nature, the Louisiana boy attempts to save Pacino's administration and future but, is unable to resurrect him in the end. While Pacino is resolute in his hopes, dreams and desires, his role as the Greek mayor of New York City is plagued with a plethora of problems that he can no longer control. His prior associations for good or bad is what is his final Waterloo. This film is resplendent in its depiction of police and political depravity. This is a must see film for political science and criminal justice students.

Most respectfully,
Dr. Charles Thomas Kelly, Jr.
Assistant Professor of the
Administration of Justice
Louisiana State University-Alexandria

City Hall (1996).......2006-01-01

Cast: Harold Becker
Cast: Al Pacino, John Cusack, Bridgett Fonda, Danny Aiello, Martin Landau, David Paymer, Anthony Franciosa, Richard Schliff, Lindsay Duncan.
Running Time: 111 minutes
Rated R for language and some violence.

"City Hall" is one of those hopeful yet ultimately frustrating films that never really delivers toward its potential. It's as if the characters, the plot, and the pacing of the film were kept apart throughout filming, and then only introduced in the editing room. The film begins with a lackluster conflict, the accidental shooting of a child by a drug dealer with relatives in the NY mob families who looks as if he came directly from Central Casting, and acts just as stiff. Before we even know anything about this character, he's confronted by a possibly corrupt cop ( the entire background motivation and confusion regarding the cop's rational for meeting with the drug dealer alone, without backup and without reporting in first is left completely unresolved), gunfire is exchanged, and everyone is dead, including the innocent child, who is clearly injected into this formula for nothing more than aesthetic/emotional purposes, and is treated like "cinema-chum", shot dead for instant sympathy by the audience, only to draw in the bigger fish in the water, the primary characters.

On the heels of the shooting, we are introduced to our principles, Al Pacino as the mayor, John Cusack as the deputy mayor, single-handedly managing the entirety of New York. The completely contrived setup of the administration of a city the size of New York being managed, at least from all appearances we are given on screen, by these two characters is beyond laughable, but insipid. The central plot of the movie springs from the reaction by City Hall to this one shooting incident, as the world is (we suppose) put on temporary pause for days afterward in New York by this event. Cusack abandons his supposed position with City Hall and becomes a knee-jerk Mickey Spilane, trodding beside Bridget Fonda on some half-ass investigation of the politics surrounding the now dead cop, suspected of corruption, and the question of why the drug dealer was ever on the streets in the first place, having been questionably released on parole years before. Everyone phones in their performances, which appears as if everyone approached the movie with high hopes, then got distracted by something better to do, (possibly calling their agents for better scripts once this movie started filming) and just showed up to through with the dialogue. Numerous gaffs, faux pauxs regarding life in New York, cornball accents by Cusack, Fonda's character operating with the depth of a spring puddle, vanilla backgrounds, boring dialogue (save Al Pacino's impassioned, yet ultimately weak tirades toward the shooting of James Bone and his personal conversations with Pappas) make for a really unsatisfying films; "City Hall" just can't deliver and feels like a TV movie of the week.

City Hall should not work.......2005-08-27

A complicated story line. John Cusack is new to me: a performance that only falters in the last stages of the film. John Cobb (Austin, TX) has said in his review, "I am not a big Pacino fan, feeling he only plays one character well, and that one I'm way past tired". I see what he means.

The set characters and set pieces - down to the set music - grow increasingly hollow to the point that you wonder if Pacino was intending to sound hollow.

This film should not work yet by the end you have been drawn into it. You have seen something not great but unusual and magnetic. You watch the credits feeling sombre. You hope that on one will talk to you for a while.

Music Album:

Music Album

Music Album

Music

Cosmo Afrique ~ King Britt Presents Obe Funke

The Complete John's Children ~ John's Children

Are You Dead Yet? ~ Children of Bodom

Marauder ~ Magnum

Don't Close Your Eyes ~ Kix

Didjeridu Planet 3

Blues O Utaenai ~ Escargot

Tono Nite ~ Yoko Nagayama

Xalima ~ Seydina Insa Wade

1991 Concerti ~ Fabrizio De Andre