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Additional Music by:
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John Powell
Jeff Rona
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Label:
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Bootlegs (no label)
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Availability:
No commercial release. Bootlegs began to appear on the secondary market in 2000 and have continued to change hands ever since. The first bootleg had no name or number, while the second one has the number 'HZCD 006LR'.
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Sorry, there are no commercial ordering options for this title. However, you can
search for this title at the soundtrack specialty outlets listed on the Filmtracks Links Page. |
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Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... only if you are the true Hans Zimmer collector and want about
5 minutes of decent material.
Avoid it... if you have no need for an uninspiring sampling of Media
Ventures cues of a more bland derivation.
Filmtracks Editorial Review:
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| | Zimmer |
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| | Powell | |
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Chill Factor: (Hans Zimmer/John Powell/Jeff Rona) Do
film studios really take us for such fools that we wouldn't be able to
figure out that Chill Factor is a badly twisted and poorly conceived
remake of the popular 1994 film Speed? This time, instead of a bus
rigged to explode if it slows below 50 mile per hour, you have a nasty
biological weapon that will explode and defoliate plants, melt human flesh,
etc, if it is warmed above 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Worse yet, the bomb's name
is Elvis and the vehicle this time is an ice cream truck. The plot is one of
those buddy adversity ones, putting Cuba Gooding Jr. and Skeet Ulrich in the
position of being forced to carry the bomb to a target chosen for reasons of
revenge by a government-brainwashed villain who has gotten free from the
clutches of the law. One of the famously dumb quotes from the film was "I'd
like to kick your ass like last year's underwear." Sound stupid? Indeed it
is, and the film plummeted to the depths of obscurity within a week or two
after its theatrical release. It'll eventually be one of those
after-midnight flicks you see on cable channels, broken into segments
between advertisements for sultry 900-number call ads. Another problem:
while the score was mixed in a decent, stereophonic fashion in the film, the
bass of the sound effects booms in sub-25Hz ranges, often bordering on the
ability to blow out speakers if you attempt to raise the volume to enjoy the
music. As an assignment, Chill Factor was just as curious for
composer Hans Zimmer as it had been for Cuba Gooding Jr. (who had just come
off of an Academy Award win). Zimmer had been nominated for three Academy
Award wins in the 18 months prior to Chill Factor, gaining mainstream
attention for The Thin Red Line, The Prince of Egypt, and
As Good As It Gets. Add to that period a strong action score for
The Peacemaker and Zimmer was on a roll.
And then, in 1999, Chill Factor was his sole
assignment, and it would take Gladiator the following year for fans
to forget the highly forgettable previous year that Zimmer had experienced.
As per usual, Zimmer delegated some of the scoring duties for Chill
Factor to his regular collaborators (perhaps he actually viewed the film
and realized its laughable premise and presentation), John Powell and Jeff
Rona. As a score, Chill Factor isn't much more intelligent than the
film it accompanies. If you've ever heard one of those dozens of Media
Ventures sampler CDs, usually divided up by genre of music, then you've
likely heard material far better and presented with stronger consistency
than the compilation of cues for Chill Factor. This score really is
nothing more than a collection of 25 or so Media Ventures sampler cues, and
despite the basic development of two themes/motifs for the film --one for
the two heroes, the other for the nutcase who created the bomb-- there is a
distinct feeling that we've heard all of this before. Most of the action
underscore is a variation of rambling keyboards and string samples that fans
of the composer have grown accustomed to. The action music is not even close
to being as finely tuned as in, for instance The Peacemaker, nor do
the actions cues last for lengthy enough periods of time to establish an
exciting mood for the music (a probable result of the film's pace and rapid
scene changes). The music even fails to pump up the listener in its chaos,
as The Rock did for some fans. The theme for the two heroes is hinted
at in some of the action material, but comes to life in the one outstanding
cue in all of Chill Factor. The soft, acoustic guitar performance of
this theme occupies one of the score's lengthier cues, and despite its
painfully obvious rip-off of the Toys theme of the same emotional
direction, it is one of those great "easy-listening" Media Ventures
moments.
The other evident theme is the one for the villain of the
picture, and this series of rhythms and motifs is somewhat amusing in its
almost Spy Kids-like reliance on techno-gadget sounds. It is a more
forceful representation of hard percussion and guitars like you would
expect, but it has a strangely distorted series of keyboarded measures and
female vocals (real or programmed, it's hard to tell). Adding insult to
injury, this villain theme even has a thematic progression that mocks Mark
Mancina's Speed score. Overall, the score is further hindered by its
30-second cue construction. The film was enough of a failure to obstruct the
possibility of a song or score album. But, as usual, Media Ventures
has let the complete score filter out for fans to bootleg (do these guys
even care anymore about security on their works?), and the complete
underscore is nearly impossible to enjoy (outside of that one soft guitar
theme that remains intact) because of its succession of ultra-short cues. It
also exposes several repeat uses of the same, or nearly identical music for
multiple scenes. The original 42-minute bootleg with 28 untitled tracks is
deceptive, because many of the cues are simply reprises of other tracks on
the album, and others are slight remixes that don't vary enough to consider
them worthy of repeat listens. Subsequent bootlegs have condensed the music
down to two cues: the end credits as heard on the DVD and a suite formed out
of the 26 remaining, short cues (the end credits had been repeated for some
reason on the previous bootleg). The shorter, two-track bootleg is only 22
minutes in length, but it's a far better listening experience on album.
Whoever combined the short cues into the 17:30 minute suite did a good
enough job to make the album listenable on a basic level. There is, however,
some slight upper range distortion on many of the bootlegs' presentation of
the end credits, probably due to excessive volume somewhere along the
transfer line. The only reason Zimmer fans, or anyone else for that matter,
should invest in these bootlegs is for the 3-minute Toys-like guitar
theme. Otherwise, it's nothing more than a bland MV sampler. **
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Viewer Ratings and Comments:
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Track Listings (Bootleg #1):
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Total Time: 42:21
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• 1. Track 1 (1:15)
• 2. Track 2 (0:38)
• 3. Track 3 (0:39)
• 4. Track 4 (0:38)
• 5. Track 5 (0:39)
• 6. Track 6 (0:38)
• 7. Track 7 (0:39)
• 8. Track 8 (0:39)
• 9. Track 9 (1:54)
• 10. Track 10 (0:52)
• 11. Track 11 (2:06)
• 12. Track 12 (1:30)
• 13. Track 13 (0:44)
• 14. Track 14 (1:09)
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• 15. Track 15 (0:37)
• 16. Track 16 (0:38)
• 17. Track 17 (0:39)
• 18. Track 18 (0:23)
• 19. Track 19 (1:28)
• 20. Track 20 (3:28)
• 21. Track 21 (0:40)
• 22. Track 22 (2:44)
• 23. Track 23 (0:39)
• 24. Track 24 (1:38)
• 25. Track 25 (3:56)
• 26. Track 26 (3:10)
• 27. Track 27 (4:16)
• 28. Track 28 (4:18)
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(No track names)
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Track Listings (Bootleg #2, HZCD 006LR):
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Total Time: 21:52
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• 1. End Credits (4:21)
• 2. Chill Factor Suite (17:31)
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The bootlegs include no extra information about the score or film.
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