Buy it... if you'd be interesting in hearing one of Jerry Goldsmith's few all-electronic scores that relies on brooding texture to provide its effect.

Avoid it... if you prefer Goldsmith's often vibrant combination of electronic and orchestral elements with thematic and rhythmic development.

Goldsmith

Criminal Law: (Jerry Goldsmith) While the film was absolutely torn apart by critics and audiences alike, Criminal Law was an introduction of two eventually well-known people in the mainstream American cinema. Young British actor Gary Oldman debuted in Hollywood's spotlight with Criminal Law, as did director Martin Campbell, for whom this film would be his first leap from television to a career in cinema that would yield projects like Goldeneye and The Mask of Zorro (and its sequel) down the road. With a plot that attempts to jolt audiences with false scares from start to finish, Criminal Law throws Oldman's cocky character, an attorney, into a series of legal fires created by Kevin Bacon's maniacal character. The attorney gets the criminal acquitted on one brutal rape and murder charge before that criminal then turns around and begins framing the attorney (and generally harassing him) for subsequent murders. Hokey dialogue and a homoerotic subtext plague the graphic film, and by the time the movie was done jerking around the audience on its ride of dubious logic, Criminal Law qualified as a genuine, grade-A stinker. Campbell would, a decade after this project, rely on James Horner as a regular collaborator, but Criminal Law would come when the director rotated between composers and, for this project, teamed for the only time with Jerry Goldsmith. In the 1980's, Goldsmith was at the height of his experimentation with electronics, often with grand results when combining them with his usual orchestral ensemble. Even in scores dominated by his array of synthetics, either an orchestral ensemble or notable collection of soloists would accompany those electronic textures. There were only a few scores for which Goldsmith would turn exclusively to his synthesizers, and their succession in the middle to late 1980's includes Runaway, Alien Nation (a rejected work) and Criminal Law. Not surprisingly, these would be the few scores performed by Goldsmith himself as well.

			Learn more about supporting Filmtracks

To enjoy a score like Criminal Law, especially if you're a die hard fan of Goldsmith's typically resounding combination of orchestra and electronics, you have to accept the work at face value. Even as dominant as the electronics are in a concurrent score like Extreme Prejudice, there is little that will prepare you for the stark landscape of Criminal Law. Synthesizers back in the 1980's had a distinctly fake sound to their imitations of real instruments, and scores like this show their age very quickly. The tones are harsh, mechanical, and dissonant, leaving practically nothing for the listener to latch onto and remember later. From start to finish, Criminal Law is an exercise in texture devoid of thematic or rhythmic development beyond brief ideas introduced in nearly every cue. Stylistically, the music is probably appropriate for the age and attitude of the film itself, sweeping aside any sense of harmony or genuine sensibility in the same way the film disregards logic and reality. It broods with unsatisfying monotony similar to James Horner's The Name of the Rose from the same era, even with the token thematic inclusion at the end (for Goldsmith, it's a synthetic trumpet and piano theme). Whether Goldsmith's reason for producing an all-electronic score for Criminal Law was budgetary or purposefully for the texture, one thing is for certain: the learned Goldsmith collector will be able to translate the rhythms and motifs to their orchestral counterparts if they listen closely enough. This may be difficult, given the propensity this score has towards boring the listeners, but there are certain sections in Criminal Law that could easily make for a very strong cue if only performed by orchestral instrumentation. The choice of synthesized sounds themselves is somewhat curious, though, because Goldsmith refrains from using his more popular synthetic sounds (pan pipes, bouncing basketball, wet street swishes, etc) in favor of very dull and unmemorable keyboarding and sound effects. Overall, Criminal Law is definitely one of the weaker Goldsmith efforts of the modern era, combining a lack of diverse instrumentation with a stylistic intent to add to the film's dissolution through dark textures. *

Bias Check:

For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.22 (in 111 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.36 (in 120,040 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.