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Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... only if you are a die hard fan of Kamen's work and are a huge enough fan of the film to warrant the more expensive purchase on CD. Avoid it... if you're a fan of the film, but never noticed much of Kamen's score as being a reason for that enjoyment. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
The demand for Kamen's music for Die Hard was fierce, too. Bootlegs abounded, and fans rushed to record stores to buy the "Michael Kamen's Opus" compilation album just to get a few minutes of a theme from the film (arbitrarily renamed "Takagi Dies"). The demand was always a bit puzzling, because the score for Die Hard was never as classic as the film it accompanied. In parts, the score in film was distracting, and it was nearly completely overshadowed by the use of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" (to represent Hans Gruber and his Germanic thugs) and the song "Let it Snow" throughout (and mostly at the end). The only truly memorable Kamen cues came during the assault at the end of the film, culminating in the brass blasts unleashed as Gruber (a Snape-gone-sophisticated Alan Rickman) falls to his death in slow motion. What many fans readily forget is that the great majority of Die Hard's plot consists of cat and mouse suspense. As our hero John McClane eludes his would-be killers and conducts his attempts to contact the police, the score follows the same low-key path that it did as the terrorists first secured the building. Kamen's pseudo-oriental riffs, combined with lengthy plucking of strings and themeless sound effects, are a sufficient representation of the Nakatomi Plaza and the hide and seek game within. Unfortunately, this music doesn't translate well onto album. Only once the party really begins, and the Plaza is under siege by an ineffectual police and FBI force, does Kamen's score begin to hold its own. Even during the climax of the film, as the vault of the Plaza is opened by the terrorists, Kamen's music continues to take a back seat to his own re-recordings of "Ode to Joy." When listening to the first and middle section of the score on album, you begin to realize that the music was being carried by the film. This even includes the more creative cues, such as the fake Western-theme that Kamen conjures up to represent the "Roy" alter-ego of McClane. During the assault, however, Kamen's deep blasts of brass and constant snare drum finally pick up the beat, and this is the music that fans have long waited for. These assault cues save the score from mediocrity, and provide fifteen minutes of very strong, orchestrally dynamic and effective music both in film and on album. In the end, however, it is Kamen's lack of a memorable theme for the McClane character that dooms the Die Hard score. The "Ode to Joy" use was so identifiable with the terrorists that McClane, musically speaking, is by far the viewer's second favorite. But in any case, Kamen's work was finally released on a legitimate CD album in 2002 as part of the limited Varèse Sarabande Club, with only 3,000 copies available. The 77-minute album substitutes the song at the end for a disparate instrumental version of "Let it Snow." What fans may also forget is that the master tapes for the Die Hard score were never very clear to begin with. The sound quality is muffled at best --something that is an unfortunate reality of poorer-sounding original masters-- and that important aspect of the album should serve as another warning flag to casual listeners. Given the price and limited availability of Varèse's Die Hard release, the casual film music fan should beware the hype. The label has done an excellent job of re-ordering the cues and providing Kamen's work in the best possible presentation, but an overrated score with poor sound quality cannot be overcome by even the best presentation. ***
The limited edition Varèse Sarabande set has its usual standard of excellent, in-depth analysis of the score and film. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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