Buy it... if you regularly enjoy the saccharine, positive themes of Randy Edelman's usual style and want to hear them at their most noble and glorious levels.

Avoid it... if Edelman's smooth and easy thematic constructs with an orchestra and synthesizers seem plastic and simplistic to you.

Edelman

Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story: (Randy Edelman) A handful of biographical films have been made about Bruce Lee, the legendary master of the martial arts and film icon who mysteriously died in July of 1973. Many of them have taken artistic liberties with the factual aspects of Lee's life, and Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story is no exception. Starring Jason Scott Lee (who is of no relation to Bruce Lee) as the famed kung fu favorite, this 1993 film gets more of the facts about Lee's personality straight than any of the others, but still suffers from some awkward missteps in those regarding setting and circumstances. For director Rob Cohen, the film would mark his jump from television films to feature projects on the big screen, and his choice for the composer of his debut was the versatile Randy Edelman. Still enjoying the success of The Last of the Mohicans (despite his lesser role in the production of the memorable music from that super-popular score), Edelman was already well established in the industry. He and Cohen would collaborate several more times in the following years, from Dragonheart and Daylight to The Skulls and XXX, and it's easy to understand how the partnership came to be so strong after its initial outing. The score for Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story avoids all of the stereotypical Hong Kong elements of electronic and ethnic scoring that one would expect to hear in a score for Bruce Lee's life. In fact, there's very little ethnic material inserted into this score, which may come as a surprise given the immense racial barriers that Bruce Lee had to overcome on his path to success. Nevertheless, with much of the picture taking place in America (the filmmakers seemed to mistakenly substitute San Francisco instead of Seattle as Lee's early residence), the score comes across as strangely patriotic in its completely upbeat and heroic nature. This was Edelman's stylistic tendency at the time, of course; his scores are often saturated with a undaunted, positive spirit, and this serene outlook on life is once again put to use in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story.

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The pleasant demeanor of Edelman's score is so sugary in general that you sometimes forget that the film is a biographical tale with extremely serious situations and often troubled hurdles. Edelman seems to get caught up in the heroic atmosphere that one feels after Lee successfully kicks someone in the head and wins a fight. Even in its more subtle, family-related moments, the same lofty set of themes, all polished with shiny, harmonic progressions, fill the room with a delightful touch of wholesome mores and personal achievement. As usual, these themes aren't overly complex. Edelman, ever the songwriter, conjures yet a few more smooth and enjoyable themes performed without much counterpoint by his usual choice of instrumentation. The orchestra often performs the primary themes in their glory, from "Dragon's Theme" to "The Dragon's Heartbeet," with a noble horn (real or synthetic) leading the way. Edelman's electronics, recorded separately (and perhaps with the piano under his own fingers), propel the ambitious side of the story, hurling the heroic music into full gear during action scenes. The instrumentation offers the same mix of orchestral and synthetic tones as the equally saccharine Kindergarten Cop, even down to the same lightly menacing electronic samples used for darker moments in both films. Likewise, the synthetics never interfere with the orchestral elements to such an extent that an enthusiast of purely orchestral scores will mind their presence much. A question needs to be raised, however, about Edelman's seemingly limited method of creating a dynamic soundscape, and this concern relates closely to his more famous score from the same year, Gettysburg. While Edelman's somewhat plastic, synthetic side of scoring hindered Gettysburg due to its inability to mesh with the historical setting, the same can't really be said of Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, given that it's a more modern tale. Still, the strictly positive, cymbal-crashing attitude of the music, especially for such a tragic family story, does seem slightly out of place. Even without considering the topic of the film, Edelman's music, as positively charged as it is, could potentially wear on the nerves after a while. Still, the simple themes of Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story make it an easy and enjoyable casual listening experience. ****   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Randy Edelman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.06 (in 18 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.2 (in 27,263 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.