Buy it... only if you can accept a very basic summary of this soundtrack on a hideously awful CD product that is missing nearly all of the most important original and traditional recordings made by Michael Kamen for this film.

Avoid it... if you're hoping that Kamen could exceed the quality of Die Hard 2 by providing significantly fresh original themes and structures for a director that basically precluded such a direction.

Kamen

Die Hard With a Vengeance: (Michael Kamen) One of the few actors who could out-class Alan Rickman in his battles with Bruce Willis as John McClane is Jeremy Irons, and the latter sinisterly portrays the brother of Rickman's famed villain, Hans Gruber, in Die Hard With a Vengeance. The 1995 blockbuster hit is the third in the Die Hard franchise and finished as the highest grossing film for that year at the worldwide box office. Irons' character, Simon Gruber, is a ruthless criminal mastermind determined to seek revenge against McClane for killing his brother in the original film. He forces McClane (and a comedic sidekick in the form of Samuel L. Jackson) to play idiotic games that lead the police officer across New York while Gruber conducts a massive gold heist underneath the city. Terrorist bombings, infrastructure damage, and threats to kill school children are among the poor behavior witnessed in the plot, and in the unfortunately discarded original version of the script for Die Hard With a Vengeance, Gruber actually succeeds in escaping. While not as cohesively entertaining as the previous two films in the franchise, the return of director John McTiernan to the concept yielded several individually encapsulating scenes of suspense and action. Also accompanying McTiernan in his reunion with McClane was the director's unconventional methodology when it came to constructing the film's soundtrack. Composer Michael Kamen was good sport about incorporating McTiernan's chosen outside source material directly into the structure of his score for Die Hard, and he had to maneuver around the symphonic poem "Finlandia" by Jean Sibelius in Die Hard 2: Die Harder. For the third film, McTiernan returned to idea of applying traditional melodies to the movie, ranging from the popular Civil War song "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" to pieces by Brahms and Beethoven that have less of an impact. Just as "Finlandia" became the de facto theme of the prior film, "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" is the identity of Die Hard With a Vengeance, applied liberally throughout the picture and over the end credits. Also at play are several pop, rap, and R&B songs employed to add flavor to the New York locale, led by The Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer in the City." The rap and R&B songs address the Harlem environment more specifically, marking the first time in the franchise that the soundtrack's songs don't reflect the tone of the score (or vice versa). The highly problematic album release for this soundtrack sprinkles these songs, along with the very long classical pieces and Alexander Mosolov's "The Iron Foundry," amongst the score cues.

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Not all went smoothly between McTiernan and Kamen in the production of Die Hard With a Vengeance, however. The composer's original score was reportedly rejected by the director, the latter instead choosing to use material from the first two films to fill the gaps in between the non-original placements. Kamen did eventually write a replacement score for at least a substantial portion of the film, incorporating the melody of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" into several cues. Perhaps the greatest irony of these circumstances is the fact that much of what Kamen eventually provided for the final cut of Die Hard With a Vengeance sounds remarkably similar to his approach to Die Hard 2. Aside from the obvious usage of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," there is no substantial new theme for the third film, only a more ominous variation on the original film's suspense motif punctuating the Simon Gruber character with anything fresh. The primary theme of the franchise, reduced by Kamen from six notes to four throughout the previous film's score, continues in its hapless representation of McClane here. Its performances are appropriately tired and spread a bit more thin than in Die Hard 2, where it seemingly had a more heroic role. The most extensive manipulation of this idea comes in "Goodbye Bonwits," a cue of six minutes that is noteworthy for accomplishing practically nothing. The same could be said for a number of the conversational and suspense cues in Die Hard With a Vengeance. The most noteworthy moment in the score comes perhaps in "Waltz of the Bankers," in which Kamen cleverly alludes to Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" from the first film in a very dark tone, musically acknowledging this movie's connection to Hans Gruber. Otherwise, if you thought that the music for Die Hard 2 was nebulous in its often lifeless extension of the first film's motifs and structures, then this score will likely impress you even less. Part of the problem with Die Hard With a Vengeance has always been its absolutely wretched album release. The commercial product from RCA/BMG is so awful that it doesn't even include a track listing on its packaging. It contains 28 minutes of score but omits Kamen's most important music, including all but one of the action cues and all of the major performances of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." Some of the score cues presented are alternate versions of those heard in the film, and the 25 minutes of classical covers at the end are largely irrelevant and very poorly performed. It is possible that less than one fourth of the music that Kamen wrote for this film (when including the rejected material) is represented on this album, and that is in part why it holds absolutely no value on the secondary market. While Kamen's score isn't spectacular, it deserves better than this terrible product.   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Music as Written for the Film: ***
Music as Heard on Album: *
Overall: **

Bias Check:

For Michael Kamen reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.14 (in 14 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.22 (in 32,684 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.