Buy it... only if you specifically seek five to ten minutes of harmonious grandeur or synthetically rocking action sequences that you appreciated in the film.

Avoid it... if you prefer not to be reminded of half a dozen other composers' music when trying to assemble this completely unfocused score into some semblance of a unified work.

Davis

Behind Enemy Lines: (Don Davis) The depictions of war in 20th Century Fox's 2001 release Behind Enemy Lines are so incredibly asinine that it should have humiliated first time filmmaker John Moore upon the much-hyped initial showing of this travesty. It just so happened that the film debuted for the crew of the real-life American aircraft carrier featured in the story, and you have to wonder if those sailors and airmen were as horrified by the fallacies of logic in Behind Enemy Lines as many critics and civilian audiences. Set during the Bosnian War of the early 1990's, the movie follows the struggle of two American fighter pilots shot down by Serbs while on a surveillance mission. The casting of comedian Owen Wilson as the lead American on the run and Gene Hackman (in one of his final roles before announcing his retirement) as the admiral who breaks the rules to rescue him combines the worst of a stereotype on one side and miscasting on the other. Anyone looking for authenticity in regards to the Serbian villains will be struck by how ethnically inaccurate their portrayals are. Moore's career had consisted of television and video game work, and his haphazard, frenetic new-age style of shooting the film was as senseless as it was nauseating. Despite its obvious shortcomings, the $40 million production yielded marginal profits, led to two even worse straight-to-video sequels, and was resurrected for a relatively long life on the cable television circuit. Along with the ridiculous script, the style of Behind Enemy Lines was seemingly inspired by Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer, and at its worst moments, Don Davis' score emulates the most stale elements of the Bruckheimer-encouraged Media Ventures sound of action music from that time. Davis was at the height of his career in 2001. The former orchestrator had burst forth into mainstream film scoring with 1999's The Matrix and was in between his involvement with sequels in both that franchise and Jurassic Park. Despite the intelligence often conveyed in his diverse structures and instrumental choices, his projects of this variety didn't produce the kind of lengthy, high-profile career that many had anticipated for Davis (his output diminished to near nothing by the end of the 2000's). Never released commercially, his music for Behind Enemy Lines is competent but too predictable, reduced to formula applications in nearly all of its quarters. Because of its inherent bravado, however, the score remains popular among enthusiasts of the composer and film.

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So much of this score reminds the listener of its contemporary peers that Behind Enemy Lines never really develops its own musical identity. That said, Davis is precise enough in his alterations to the temp track-inspired sounds that the score functions, but only as a stream of consciousness kind of accompaniment. Stylistically, the music is all over the map. It features a heroic theme that is clearly related to Jerry Goldsmith's Air Force One at several levels. There are symphonic ostinatos that will recall Davis' collaboration with James Horner from a decade earlier. Rhythmic loops of grinding synthetic fashion will remind of Harry Gregson-Williams' militaristic thriller music of the same era. Grandiose choral passages of melodramatic harmony with brass counterpoint seem like a leftover from the early David Arnold adventure scores, Joel McNeely's Virus, and, in "Jet Smash," Craig Armstrong's 1990's work. Straight, bad-assed electronica noise and uncomfortable dissonant passages best represent Davis' own production at the time. Nowhere in any of this material does a truly cohesive score for Behind Enemy Lines develop; this isn't like Gregson-Williams' concurrent Spy Game, which at least contained fifteen or more minutes of tightly woven, synthetically enhanced music of distinctive character. No cue in Behind Enemy Lines represents the score better than "Burnett Bereavement," which includes everything from melodramatic symphonic themes and choral majesty to painful, dissonant suspense and electronica-styled garbage. Or you could compare the two solemn "Ustao" cues, which convey ethnic sensitivity through stark choral melancholy, to the end of "Burnett's Body" and middle of "Battle on Thin Ice," both of which utilizing obnoxious rock percussion to underscore the coolness of the American military while it defeats an enemy so inept that it comes across as silly. The closing action cues, including "Airborne Rescue Brigade" and "Battle on Thin Ice," are so badly reminiscent of Air Force One that you have to wonder where Davis' own capabilities went for these important scenes. There are individual highlights in Behind Enemy Lines, the resounding middle section of "Burnett Bereavement" among them, but there is just too little unique intelligence in this music to recommend it as a whole. It was only released promotionally by Davis not long after the debut of the film, and the 68 minutes of material on that release (which sounds great in terms of clarity) has been bootlegged many times since. It's difficult to understand why so many listeners are willing to accept such an unfocused whole to ensnare the short harmonious highlights. They cheapened this film and simply aren't worth the trouble. **   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Don Davis reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.2 (in 10 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.02 (in 43,269 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.