Buy it... if you enjoy Horner's minimally rendered, ethnically charged works.

Avoid it... if another blast of the sakauhachi flute over tired percussion and bland electronic soundscapes is not your cup of tea.

Horner

Bopha!: (James Horner) There have been many powerful plays written to illustrate the struggles of race in South Africa, and among them is Percy Mtwa's Bopha!. In his directorial debut, Morgan Freeman imports Hollywood talent to Zimbabwe to tell this tale against the authentic poverty-stricken backdrop of Southern Africa. That talent goes largely wasted because of the inability of Danny Glover and Malcolm McDowell to speak well in the English and Afrikaans dialects of the region. The film also had perhaps an alienating effect on audiences because the story involves conflict between the native African cultures of the areas, playing to a different storyline that impressed critics but left audiences with no clear resolution from the film. Freeman's direction also came under fire at the time. It's no surprise that he would have wanted composer James Horner to join the crew, however, for the two had both been part of a Glory film that featured an outstanding Horner effort. Bopha! is a world away, however, not only in location but in budget as well. For the project, Horner would sneak in a quick, synthesized effort to satisfy the basic needs of the film. Such endeavors by Horner (the completely synthetic or small-ensemble variety) have ranged from serviceable to miserable; it should be noted that one of Horner's best ethnic scores has remained Thunderheart, for which much the same kind of ensemble was assembled as heard in Bopha!. In many cases, you hear electronic Horner scores like Unlawful Entry or The Name of the Rose and you wish that you could hear them performed by a large symphonic group, for Horner's ideas are usually pretty strong. One major exception, however, is Bopha!, arguably one of the most unlistenable scores ever produced by Horner, even if it serves the very basic functions of the film. Unlike The Chumscrubber more than a decade later, Horner's synthetic work here exhibits very little of the composer's trademark creativity.

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The film opens and closes with the "Amandla" song performed by a variety of African voices over a strong bed of authentic percussion. The structure of the theme is pure Horner, though that theme is weakened by the nature of the vocals. Perhaps necessary, but perhaps by choice, the main chorus is flanked by significant numbers of soloists who perform a key off from the group, or, in some case, yell out and speak in regular tones. The frenetic effect is a striking study, but is nearly unlistenable on album. Both Horner and John Williams provided fuller, more listenable versions of the same general idea in Mighty Joe Young and Amistad a few years later. One intriguing similarity to Glory exists in the pulsating electronic base to the song that was also utilized in the previous score's famous opening to its end titles. A secondary theme for the score meanders through keyboarded variations, offered in full in the second and final cues. The percussive elements in the score are as you would expect, and the score definitely benefits from their presence in several cues. Most of the remainder of the work consists of purely synthetic droning, with many effects similar in style to Vibes. Much of the center portion of the score pass nearly unnoticed, with entire cues featuring a handful of drowsy note changes and soft percussive washes in the background. A synthetic trumpet makes several appearances, representing the nobility of the primary character's pride in being part of the police force. Two notable action cues break the monotony in the film's latter half, with dissonant groans in the bass regions accompanying whining, pitch-evolving synth effects and tapping and clicking percussion. The "Uprising" cue would offer some of the most annoying synthetic entanglements since Commando and would be explored further by Horner in Beyond Borders. The wailing sakauhachi prevails as the "instrument of shock" in the score, with sharp blasts and no fluid performances. Overall, Bopha! is a score that could be respected in its proper place, but varies from painful to boring on album. It's an ethnic afterthought, an faint echo of the score that could have come from this film, and it is by no means worth the effort in finding the rare, long out of print album. *   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

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For James Horner reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.13 (in 98 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.25 (in 184,725 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.