[Nicolai P. Zwar]

But John Debney’s CUTHROAT ISLAND is still original in some ways, it’s not bereft of fresh ideas of its own. It’s a classic swashbuckling score for a classic swashbuckling movie, but it adds a few elements of its own. The music fuses perhaps Korngold‑style heroism with (then) contemporary rhythmic drive and aggressive brass writing, its both both old‑fashioned and modern, the inspiration is classic film scores, but the orchestration is more modern. The central theme is energetic and rhythmically propulsive, not a pastiche; Debney threads it through varied ideas to avoid monotony.