F/X. Bill Conti
Roland Tyler (Bryan Brown), an expert in the art of special effects (F/X), has a reputation built on many low-budget hack-and-slash films and is quite surprised to find that the FBI has a job for him. He is to stage the murder of a gangster who is about to enter the Witness Protection Program. He agrees, but then things get complicated. All the while, a New York City police detective, Leo McCarthy (Brian Dennehy), is investigating the faked murder and can't understand why the FBI is even less helpful than usual.
In this score by Bill Conti has one recurring thematic idea which appears in a couple of interesting variations, but it doesn’t linger in the memory the way others in his canon do, making the score slightly anonymous, despite its intelligent and creative use of the orchestra. The theme first appears in the “Main Title,” which begins as a moody piano line underpinned by a bank of tiny tremolo strings, explodes into a large brass fanfare, and then settles down into the first performance of the theme, a seven-note motif which floats around between strings and piano above a repeated four-note ostinato.