Buy it... if you have always been fond of Michael Kamen's music for the franchise and would be interested in a faithful adaptation of his motifs and instrumentation.

Avoid it... if Kamen's Die Hard music has, like many of Marco Beltrami's summer blockbuster scores, seemed pedestrian and anonymous to you.

Beltrami

Live Free or Die Hard: (Marco Beltrami) While the fourth installment of the Die Hard franchise has surprisingly garnered neutral to positive critical reviews across the board, you still have to wonder if the concept hasn't lost sight of the reasons for its original success. Three things made John McClane's world great: his purely realistic, non-superhero abilities, the confined areas in which his terrorist foes enact their plans, and, of course, the outstanding villains themselves. After Die Hard with a Vengeance dropped the idea of the confined battlefield, and with a dozen years for writers to work on the perfect script with which to reintroduce McClane, Live Free or Die Hard somehow manages to lose all three of those original, endearing, and critical Die Hard qualities. McClane now chases a cyber terrorist around the East Coast, dragging along his daughter and actor Justin Long, whose role as the Mac in Apple's current commercials dooms his appearance from the start. A weak villain played by Timothy Olyphant is out-staged by his ninja-like female wench, which alone indicates how far this franchise has fallen. Director Len Wiseman transfers much of his crew from his last Underworld film over to Live Free or Die Hard, including composer Marco Beltrami. While Beltrami has scored several major summer blockbusters during the 2000's, including popular sequels, none have particularly gained him much attention from the mainstream. His music for these films is serviceable and occasionally quite impressive in single cues, but at the end of the day, Beltrami has a knack for writing anonymous action music that doesn't play well enough apart from the film to warrant album purchases.

With Live Free or Die Hard he tackles the same franchise predicament that he faced in Terminator 3. In this case, the franchise composer, Michael Kamen, died several years ago; his music has been held in very high regards by some collectors, though for the mainstream, it's easy to say that the films have outshined their scores. Only in the past few years did the original Die Hard score achieve a legal, limited release on CD. One of Beltrami's failings with Terminator 3 was his lack of creative incorporation of the famous theme for the franchise into his underscore. Not only does he rectify this situation in Live Free or Die Hard, but he has, in many respects, written a prototypical Kamen score with several aspects of Kamen's Die Hard music reprised for good measure. Kamen never wrote a really memorable theme for the franchise, but his six-note title theme is still surprisingly recognizable even two decades after its introduction. Beltrami uses this theme liberally, in several different contexts throughout the score. He also takes a few of Kamen's trademark motifs and instrumentation and incorporates them into a score that has Kamen's style written all over it. That instrumentation includes a plethora of low brass and varied drums, with the occasional fluttering woodwind in the treble. Orchestra hits, punctuated by the resounding percussion section, are a particular return to Kamen's original score. The main Kamen theme was never really great at action statements, but it was very effective in conveying human anguish and melodrama; Beltrami plays it dramatically right at the start in "Out of Bullets," with that tinge of drama in "It's a Fire Sale" and "Landing," and as referential counterpoint for tense situations like the three cues from "Break a Neck" to "The F-35."

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Beltrami doesn't forget the famous brass blasts that punctuated Hans Gruber's fall in Die Hard. He hints at them at the end of "Cold Cuts" and provides a full-fledged reprisal of the motif at the climax of "The F-35." Despite this pseudo-tribute to Kamen (or perhaps just a very good job of adaptation), there are some elements of the score that fall stylistically in Beltrami's corner. His use of electronics and low range strings in relentlessly chopping string ostinatos is reminiscent of his other recent action scores. Their bold posture in the "Live Free or Die Hard" conclusion to the album are almost to levels as striking as Craig Armstrong's music. The employment of percussion is, in parts, similar in ambitious tone variations as David Arnold's James Bond scores, and the more propulsive sections of Live Free or Die Hard will remind some listeners of Casino Royale. In a handful of the score's primary and lengthy action cues, a touch of Jerry Goldsmith will be noticed in the brass usage. The most interesting aspect of Beltrami's score, as a whole, is how overbearing the action can seem by the end of the album. There are some brief pauses from the chasing and explosions in Live Free or Die Hard, but you'd hardly notice them in the few subdued moments of the score. These less exciting cues, such as "Dead Hackers" and "Aftermath," don't really provide this score with its own sense of identity. Beltrami seems more content using fragments of Kamen's previous ideas, and as a result, this score is an extension of that sound rather than a noteworthy standalone entry. Given the disappointment with the adaptation work in Terminator 3, this is a definite step in the right direction. But in the end, the Live Free or Die Hard score, like the movie, simply goes through familiar moves that may or may not be enough to sustain your interest. ***

Bias Check:

For Marco Beltrami reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.58 (in 12 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 2.95 (in 12,128 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.