MOLI VIEW™

The day after seeing the new Wes Anderson film, The Darjeeling Limited, I found myself rushing to the CD counter at Borders with a copy of the soundtrack in my hands. The experience was trance-like. The last time I was that compulsively obsessed by a soundtrack was in ninth grade. The film was Quadrophenia, and it had a built-in advantage: British rock icons the Who (in particular, guitarist/songwriting genius Pete Townshend) conceptualized the story and recorded the music six years prior to director Franc Roddam's 1979 film.

But the overall effect was the same as my experience with The Darjeeling Limited: The marriage of film and music was potent to a transformative degree. And the soundtrack, standing on its own, had the power not only to invoke that feeling again, but also to produce a new relationship with the music that reached beyond the influence of the images.

By contrast, the soundtrack to director Ridley Scott's excellent new film, American Gangster, is as dull as dishwater. Though the film, which follows a Harlem drug dealer's rise and fall in the '70s, is masterful in every respect — and its soundtrack is appropriate for a '70s period piece –- there is nothing for your spirit to cling to after the film is over. While rap superstar Jay-Z found the flick so affecting that his new album (also titled American Gangster) was created in tribute to it, the soundtrack is a palid offering at best. Overplayed (and over-soundtracked) classics like Sam & Dave's "Hold On I'm Comin'" and the Staple Singers' "I'll Take You There" are so predictable that by the time Public Enemy's "Can't Truss It" makes its appearance, you're already checking out. In another context, encountering this jam would be a thrill, but on the American Gangster soundtrack, it's a dog that has lain down with fleas. You can't sort it out from the pack.

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