Buy it... only if you appreciated the combination of Carter Burwell's understated dramatic score and the synthetic adaptation of traditional spiritual pieces in the film itself.

Avoid it... if you expect Burwell's score to provide a convincing or interesting atmosphere of mystery or melodrama.

Burwell

The General's Daughter: (Carter Burwell) Playing along similar lines as military investigation films like A Few Good Men and Courage Under Fire, Simon West's The General's Daughter is a generic entry in the genre. The Con Air director handles a decent, though not overwhelming cast in a murder mystery that takes the leading investigators on a journey through the ranks of an American military base to discover who gang raped and killed the daughter of the base's commanding general during a nighttime exercise. The film was greeted with moderate success, and John Travolta in the main role is surprisingly convincing, but not even a hint of kinky sexuality and nudity could save the film from the ranks of average murder mysteries. It's the kind of production that follows so many conventions of the genre that any intelligent viewer can guess the plot after the first forty minutes. Less conventional is how West handled the music for The General's Daughter. He approached the project in a manner almost familiar to Michael Mann, which, for soundtrack collectors, should immediately indicate that an usual set of incongruous sounds are likely to be assembled for the musical ambience in this film. Indeed, West's merging of extremely diverse musical genres into the soundtrack for The General's Daughter diminishes its impact as a cohesive whole. He started with a series of traditional Negro Spiritual songs, resurrected from their original performances in the Library of Congress Field Recordings archive. Unfortunately, these Southern gothic tunes are translated into modern technological soundscapes by composer Greg Hale Jones, producing a disjointed sound of two eras that definitely were not meant to mix. Also present is an old Welsh hymn, which is performed on glockenspiel to imitate a favorite music box tune of the director. Also licensed is a somewhat sparse and poorly rendered performance of Carl Orff's tired old "O Fortuna!" from "Carmina Burana." Add on a generally conservative score by Carter Burwell and you have an overall soundtrack that defies conventional norms. Even in the score portion of the film's soundtrack album release, Burwell attempts to infuse electronic spirit into an otherwise lifeless orchestral score.

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West claims that he had been attracted to Burwell's potential style for The General's Daughter after hearing the composer's music for Fargo and Conspiracy Theory. And, if you didn't think it was possible, Burwell surprisingly creates a mutation of those two scores for The General's Daughter. The resulting sound is distinctly Burwell's, especially in his habit of writing extremely deliberate themes that take a while to unfold (in terms of pacing), but there's also a hint of James Horner and Howard Shore's more restrained work for understated orchestral drama at the time. It's a monothematic score, establishing its extremely conservative, faintly noble theme in "Exercise in Darkness" (the most important stage-setting scene in the film) and rearranging the idea in several cues thereafter. Burwell successfully presents the restrained string theme in a tone that suggests a military conspiracy, but the basic effectiveness of that theme doesn't entail any specific memorable aspect in its construct. The idea dies quickly after the conclusion of the score. The lack of any musical identity for the victim, or any other singular character or element of the story, is disappointing. More memorable are some of the instrumental colors that Burwell attempts to paint with later in the work, starting with a slight rhythmic swagger in "Epiphytic Shuffle" that not only raises memories of Conspiracy Theory in its movement, but also utilizes electronic instruments and a variety of struck percussion with stronger appeal. This technique culminates in "The Conspiracy," with slapping percussion taking center stage. As Burwell brings the theme to its natural, chime-tolling conclusion with solo trumpet predictably marking the gravity of the finale, he can't resist using an excerpt from "Amazing Grace" on bagpipes to drive the point home. Ultimately, Burwell's score works. But it's frightfully boring, really, and it misses the opportunity to merge with the elements of the Southern Gospel source music to produce a truly unique listening experience. The Negro Spiritual pieces adapted for the film are extremely annoying on album and aren't even worth a cursory examination. The entire product exists in a dull haze, failing to produce a convincing (or even interesting) atmosphere of tension. **   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Carter Burwell reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.84 (in 19 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 2.76 (in 9,936 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.