First off, I just want to start off by saying that I mean absolutely no offense for my future comments that will follow on the subject of film music composer, John Murphy.

John Murphy has a great body of work under his belt, composing music for such films as Snatch, 28 Days Later, Intermission, Millions, Sunshine, Last House on the Left, 28 Weeks Later, Armored, and Kick-Ass. Clearly this guy is talented. His music is consistently worthy of listening to without watching the film…it is only the latter films that I am concerned about, and I will explain why.

First of all, Murphy composed what may be his best song called ‘In a Heartbeat’, used originally in the scene in the house at the end of 28 Days Later. This song stuck with me long after watching that movie, then when the sequel came out, he used practically the same song a number of times in that film. If you look on the album on iTunes, the song is listed as 28 Theme, Theme 2…and so on. At first I didn’t have a problem with this, as the song is awesome and perfect for those movies (I am sure I will hear it a number of times in the 3rd installment).

Soon after 28 Days Later, he scored another movie for the same director called Sunshine, where he did another amazing original score. One song in particular entitled ‘The Surface of the Sun’. This song was used in a pivotal gunfight sequence in this year’s film “Kick-Ass”, which Murphy also “scored”. Along with this song, he used the ‘theme’ from “28 Days Later” in the fight scene involving Nicolas Cage’s character in the warehouse. Also, when I saw the film “Armored” earlier this year, I was excited to hear another great score from him. Yet I was disappointed as much of the music in the film was just Murphy’s rehash of Massive Attack’s song “Angel”. I urge you to find Massive Attack’s song, then rent “Armored” and tell me that the ‘theme’ music in that film isn’t an instrumental version of “Angel”.

As I said before, I mean no disrespect whatsoever to John Murphy, as he is a more than exceptional composer. He truly is one of the best in the business. I have just been confused with a few of his last movies. Is he sort of just cashing it in? If anyone has any clue about what I am talking about, please comment or at least let me know.