Good Men (Paul Haslinger)

What is it?

Good Men (2024), directed by Bobby Roth, is a film about people trying to figure out life, a process that can ultimately never be finished, yet occupies so much of our time. This thoughtful and personal documentary tries to get to grips with what constitutes a good man. Do we have the power to change?

Roth has had a long and fruitful collaboration with synth legends Tangerine Dream. They worked on no less than six movies, starting with Heartbreakers in 1984 and ending with The Switch in 1992. In 1988, the band scored Roth’s TV movie Dead Solid Perfect, and TD member Paul Haslinger got to know the American director. Haslinger had joined TD in early 1986, but for some reason did not work on the 1987 Roth/TD collaboration Tonight’s The Night, reportedly scored mostly by Christopher Franke.

In the late 80s and early 90s, Haslinger also contributed to The Man Inside and Rainbow Drive, before swan song The Switch from ’92. The latter was more of an Edgar Froese solo score, as Haslinger had left Tangerine Dream in late 1990. During the Switch scoring sessions in Vienna, Froese hadn’t even told Bobby Roth that Haslinger was gone from the band. As Roth said in my interview, “Edgar is a circumspect fellow”.

In 1995, Roth hooked up with Chris Franke again. Franke had left TD during the autumn of 1987, and was now in full swing as a solo composer. Roth worked with Franke on a long run of projects over 15 years, among them features Jack the Dog (2001), Manhood (2003) and Berkeley (2005), ending with TV movie Reviving Ophelia in 2010. Since then, Franke has more or less left the music/film business (Roth even stated that he “couldn’t find him”), and in 2020 Roth hired Haslinger on Pearl, the first time in 30 years that the two of them worked together. The collaboration continued with the 2023 short documentary Our Ukrainian Sky, before the feature length documentary Good Men from 2024.

How is it?

Paul Haslinger has released a 17-minute download album of the Good Men score. It features six tracks, starting with the somewhat stagnant and Thomas Newman-ish «Main Title». «Full Spectrum» is far more vibrant and rhythmic in its rock-based execution, and reminded me of how Haslinger used to sound as a new solo film composer in the early noughties. «Fathers And Sons» has hints of Risky Business behind an ambient soundscape, a detour Haslinger has taken several times in his career, on wildly different projects like Pointman, The Girl Next Door and Halt and Catch Fire.

«Family Bonds» and «Battlescars And All» are pleasant, but somewhat aimless and meandering, while «Milles Plateaux» is the track that probably most old fans of Tangerine Dream will sit up and take notice of. It has clear elements of the Berlin School and is a wonderful flashback to those earlier, magical times that both Bobby Roth and Paul Haslinger were part of.

It is a joy to observe that Roth and Haslinger have hooked up again after all those years. Let’s hope they continue on further adventures and that the 74-year-old director has a few more movie hits up his sleeve.