Buy it... only if you are an established enthusiast of Jerry Goldsmith's Latin tones, for the five or so minutes of compelling ethnic material related to this score's primary theme stands apart from the rest of the work.

Avoid it... if you expect a significant amount of original contribution to this soundtrack by Goldsmith, because all of the film's romantic material is adapted from (or outright states) existing songs from the story's era.

Goldsmith

Caboblanco: (Jerry Goldsmith) Charles Bronson existed on screen in the 1970's and 1980's to accomplish one thing: punish the wicked. In Caboblanco, he essentially meets that goal once again, though the screenplay is so awful that the payoff at the end is hardly worth the insufferably endless conversations prior. Obvious noir sensibilities and too many parallels to the 1942 classic Casablanca (extending well beyond just the title of the film) make Caboblanco laughable in parts and insufferable in others. Bronson is an inn owner in South America caught in the middle of a scheme by Jason Robards, the town's commanding force and a former Nazi in hiding, to sink and retrieve priceless, stolen wartime artifacts that exist at the bottom of the town's bay. A love triangle complicates matters, and regardless of how seriously Bronson tries to take his role in Caboblanco, his other collaborations with director J. Lee Thompson remained closer to his comfort zone. Also a regular partner in the productions of Thompson was composer Jerry Goldsmith, though none of their work together gained much attention in the mainstream due to the poor overall quality of those films. Goldsmith had been interested in exploring Latin sounds in his music for much of his life, gaining the opportunity to do so in several projects ranging from Bandolero! to Medicine Man (though none would prove quite as intoxicatingly effective as Under Fire). The Latin influence on Caboblanco is arguably more pronounced than in many of his other similar examinations of this cultural sound, with the highlights of this score firmly rooted in the subgenre. While performed by the National Philharmonic Orchestra, the composer's most reliable players at the time, the straight symphonic elements are not the most memorable heard in Caboblanco. Castanets, tambourine, solo trumpet, acoustic guitar, and other stereotypical instruments for the region contribute to the flair of Latin rhythms and flourishes in counterpoint that very convincingly ground the score in the proper place. The complimentary tones of the two harmonious trumpets together is a welcome technique. If anything, though, Caboblanco contains too little flavor of this variety, for the score is ultimately sunk by its remaining parts.

The lack of development of the title theme in Caboblanco is its doom, for outside of "Main Title," "Beckdorf's House," the start of "The Drowning," and "The Final Act Begins," Goldsmith not only loses the identity of this piece in the remainder of the work, but its exotic personality as well. The secondary themes are all weak. The love theme for Caboblanco is comprised of an adaptation of Roy Noble's "The Very Thought of You," presented in solemn, whimsically romantic tones that are surprisingly shallow throughout the picture, attempting too hard to pull at the Casablanca strings and failing to achieve any sense of convincing warmth that is usually present in Goldsmith's own compositions along similar lines. And the film and album both make liberal use of the adaptation, extending to over ten minutes of ultimately boring material that really doesn't fit the tone of the rest of the score despite the late 1940's setting. The soft song appropriate to the time written by Goldsmith himself, "Heaven Knows," is equally mismatched. A slightly terse string rhythm for Robards' villain is only vaguely explored in "Beckdorf's House," giving the character none of the convincingly sinister musical personality that Goldsmith had given Gregory Peck's hiding Nazi character in The Boys from Brazil (a score with just a few hints of Latin tones, though effective ones). The action cues in Caboblanco are surprisingly orphaned by the rest of the score as well, creating an effective ambient environment for grisly killings but not really achieving any greater purpose. The duo of "Boat Attack" and "Hide and Seek" on album, the product's two longest cues, are both severely underachieving in depth, despite the composer's attempts to incorporate some of the Latin instrumentation into their otherwise symphonic stirrings. The two concluding cues do very little to intelligently convey the climax of the story, leaving the score in an aimless fog of uncertainty before invariably returning to the Roy Noble adaptations. The entire album presentation is disjointed in personality, never living up to the contextual flair of the opening cue. Hearing less than 25 minutes of original Goldsmith score doesn't help, either. A non-limited CD released by Prometheus in 1993 was re-issued with identical musical contents but different artwork in early 2005. The score has promise, but Caboblanco is a rare case in which Goldsmith fails to deliver upon a compelling title theme after its opening introduction. **   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

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