The soundtrack album for the crime comedy
Bandits, which stars
Bruce Willis,
Billy Bob Thornton, and
Cate Blanchett, and was directed by
Barry Levinson, is one of those seemingly random collections of tracks that may work in the film, but make no particular sense comprising a various artists album.
Bob Dylan's
"Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum," taken from his 2001
Love and Theft album, for example, serves as a comment on the bank-robbing abilities of the two main male characters, while
Jimmy Page and
Robert Plant's
"Gallows Pole" accompanies a prison break and
Bonnie Tyler's '80s hits
"Holding Out for a Hero" (recycled from the
Footloose soundtrack) and
"Total Eclipse of the Heart" give some insight into the motivations of the main female character. But tracks like
Pete Yorn's
"Just Another" and
Five for Fighting's
"Superman (It's Not Easy)" (already on its way up the charts when this album was released) seem to be here mainly for the purpose of promoting acts on the
Sony Music roster, and there's no telling what function a 1964 recording of
Burt Bacharach and
Hal David's
"Walk on By," in which a young
Aretha Franklin makes like
Dionne Warwick, or
Michael Martin Murphey's evergreen horse tribute
"Wildfire" have to do with anything, since they aren't actually heard in the film at all.
Christopher Young's seven-minute suite of his score for the film is appropriately varied in such disparate company, moving from a slow, ominous, and bluesy segment into an aggressive dance segment. Maybe this album represents the favorite songs of somebody connected with the film, and there are certainly some good songs here, but as a stand-alone album, the collection doesn't make much sense. Not that that's kept other albums of this sort from succeeding. ~ William Ruhlmann
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