Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you could be satisfied with a dull, but sufficient extension of the basic war genre sound you heard in The Hunt for Red October. Avoid it... if you seek a score with any truly intelligent constructs or dynamic performances, elements that you often find in Basil Poledouris' works (but not here). Filmtracks Editorial Review:
Flight of the Intruder: (Basil Poledouris) Director John Milius' 1991 translation of the popular Stephen Coonts novel came under much criticism at the time of its release. Viewers who had appreciated the novel sharply criticized the adaptation, claiming that much of the intrigue involving the intelligent, politically complex portion of the plot was replaced with black and white wartime situations that make for good, dumbed-down American cinema. For the story of A-6 fighter pilots during Vietnam of the early 1970's, the characters, while maintaining flight names such as Cowboy, Razor, Rabbit, or Tiger, didn't closely resemble their counterparts from the book as well, further irritating Coonts' readers. Adaptations of techno-thriller war novels to the big screen were a hot idea in the early 1990's, with The Hunt for Red October opening the box office floodgates to potential mega-profit imitations. Composer Basil Poledouris had by chance been the composer of the popular score for Hunt for Red October, and his friendship and working partnership with Milius would make him an immediate choice to score Flight of the Intruder the next year. By 1991, Milius and Poledouris would already have half a dozen collaborations between them, with many of them existing in the war or action genres (and their most successful venture still being the first, Conan the Barbarian). Poledouris felt so strongly about his loyalty to Milius that he dropped his assignment to Kevin Costner's Dances With Wolves because the post-production parts of Flight of the Intruder relating to the score would overlap the Costner production by two weeks. In an intriguing and frustrating development, however, Flight of the Intruder was delayed by half a year, opening up the entire time in which John Barry scored Dances With Wolves. It's been mentioned that Poledouris, the process of leaving the award-caliber film for Milius' ridiculous venture cost the composer his best shot at an Academy Award nomination and win. The criticism of Flight of the Intruder would catch up to Poledouris' score as well, for an argument could be made that the music is one of the reasons why the concept failed to maintain its intelligence and degenerated into a mindless action flick. The composer's contribution to the film is a very simple, straight forward piece of music. It is patriotic where appropriate, pulsating with snare rhythms during action sequences and subdued in ambiguity in places in between. As with The Hunt for Red October, Poledouris employed a moderately sized orchestra for Flight of the Intruder and then mixed in his own array of modern sound effects to satisfy the military genre. The title theme, heard in full during the opening and closing of the film (as well as scenes of departure) is one of Poledouris' most transparent ideas; it is obviously aimed at the same narrow audience as the film in its whole. The theme is robust with patriotic testosterone, but it suffers from the same kind of brutish attitude that left former pilots wondering why so many of the flying scenes in the film were unrealistic. Its tone on album is distractingly upbeat as a result. There is little suspense in the score, with the one preparation motif (heard best in "Bomb Run") being a 1:1 copy, an exact replica, of the one used in The Hunt for Red October. With that rhythm identical and the synthetic effects similar, Flight of the Intruder does seem like an extension or sequel score in parts. The electronics this time, however, are not as well handled, with some of the rhythmic effects used in the music reverberating with a bit too much of an underwater echo mixture. The tingling, steady bass electronics that Poledouris used in his other sea-faring scores are largely absent in Flight of the Intruder as well, and they are missed. For the flying sequences themselves, Poledouris abandons the graceful kind of writing that he produced for Flyers and instead continues the tone of testosterone-driven force in simple fashion. Thus, the emotional depth of the score is minimal, and the work only serves as a good listening experience if you want your stock military action without much contemplative thought. Surprisingly, the score for Flight of the Intruder was never released commercially, despite Poledouris' considerable popularity at the time. A widely circulated bootleg has existed since the mid-1990's, however, and although several different covers have accompanied that item, every variant offers the same 45 minutes of Poledouris material in very good sound quality. Overall, it's a very average war score that requires you to turn off your brain. ** Track Listings:
Total Time: 44:21
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