The critical reaction to a film is the last thing on the mind of a composer when writing to a deadline. Sadly, the conspiracy thriller The Number 23 has been panned in the UK press, leaving the soundtrack to fend for itself. I much admired Gregson-Williams’s score for Kingdom of Heaven, a compelling story with a multi-faith theme on the Crusades, to which the composer responded with a complementary score that enhanced the picture. However, the film The Number 23, which offers no explanation to the conspiracy in hand, has failed to inspire him. Gregson-Williams sets up his stall in the Opening Titles (tr 1) where electronic sounds vie with the orchestra for supremacy. This pot-pourri includes the electric violin (featured in Kingdom of Heaven) and an intriguing little string figure near the start that arrives and departs like a zephyr. Gregson-Williams draws from his classical background and develops this fragment into a major string theme heard in the final track, “Atonement”, which alongside tr 2, “Fingerling’s Childhood”, a quiet little study for clarinet over strings, offers considerably more satisfaction than the electronic shenanigans that dominate the rest of the score. Let’s wish him a better subject next time.