The James Bond film franchise has had more than one overarching cultural icon to surmount. While Sean Connery's Bond may forever be the standard by which all others are judged, John Barry set an equally high musical standard with his elegantly sophisticated Bond scores. But by the time Pierce Brosnan took his belated, fifth-generation shot at Bondom, the producers of the series felt the need to modernize its music. That daunting task fell to modern musical synthesist Eric Serra, the accomplished longtime collaborator of French director Luc Besson (Le Femme Nikita, The Professional, The Fifth Element, and particularly The Big Blue). And the French musician tackled it with his adventurous spirit of genre-hopping only slightly muted. If anything, the incorporation of an orchestra into Serra's trademark blend of tense electronica, industrial dance beats, and exotic music samples seems like an effort (foisted upon him by the producers?) to move Bond into the 21st century, yet retain some semblance of his 1960s roots. It's a game effort of genre reinvention that's been unfairly trashed by many of the Bond overfaithful, but it's one that Serra admirers will find instantly inviting. --Jerry McCulley