Buy it... on the retail album if you want some of the least expensive 40 minutes of glorious orchestral bombast of the 1990's, a score that is as robust in stature as anything Alan Silvestri has ever produced.

Avoid it... if you have little tolerance for super-heroic themes of simplistic major-key expression, especially if they're predictably blasted out every time Sylvester Stallone delivers one of his painfully awful lines of dialogue as punctuation to a scene.

Silvestri

Judge Dredd: (Alan Silvestri) Unless you were an enthusiast of the comic on which this film was based, there wasn't much to be impressed about with Judge Dredd, a 1995 Danny Cannon venture that allowed Sylvester Stallone to continue his Demolition Man mode of operation. Mocked by critics for its inability to turn its sources of inspiration into anything particularly original, Judge Dredd is a messy combination of elements from the aforementioned Stallone action/comedy and Blade Runner and Robocop. It tries to interject humor and notoriously poor dialogue in such awkward ways that the film's visual elements are diminished to a level of stupidity that only contributes to stereotypes about summer blockbusters. Stallone and a competent array of character actors exist in a bleak, futuristic Earth where crime rules the land and super-cop "Judges" like Stallone are given the ability to arrest, sentence and execute criminals on the spot. When Stallone's character is framed for a murder and his evil DNA clone decides to switch sides, the battle is on. Without Jurgen Prochnow, Max von Sydow, and especially Armand Assante chewing on the awful script in supporting roles, Judge Dredd would be intolerably bad. Also fighting to salvage the film is Alan Silvestri's score, which came at a time in the his career when the Back to the Future and Predator composer was frustrating his fans with a series of far fluffier projects. Luckily, this assignment added to the wide range of very satisfying bombast to emanate from Hollywood that summer, holding Silvestri's action collectors' interest until the composer's significant return to the genre in the early 2000's. One of the most intriguing aspects of Judge Dredd is the influence of Jerry Goldsmith on the production. The veteran was the original choice to write the music for the picture, but scheduling circumstances that placed this film's recording period on top of those of First Knight and Congo, forcing Goldsmith to abandon Judge Dredd. This wasn't before the composer was able to write a propulsive percussion and brass-led, one-minute piece for the film's trailer, however. Many of the rhythmic sensibilities of that short recording seem to have inspired Silvestri's score, even down to the finished work's progressions. Silvestri's music, perhaps not surprisingly, sounds like a combination of Goldsmith's standard action fare, Bill Conti's Masters of the Universe and his own Predator. Not a bad combo. The similarities between Silvestri's accomplishment and Goldsmith's mannerisms may be a coincidence, though there's no doubt about what sound the filmmakers wanted to hear in their movie.

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Much like Conti's predicament with the dreadful He-Man film a decade prior, Silvestri was tasked with compensating for the many weaknesses of a doomed Judge Dredd production by created an orchestral monstrosity of a score that could overwhelm the listener with its explosive bravado. Damn near everything in this score is big, bloated, and bombastic. With the exception of a conversational revelation cue ("We Created You") and a The Hills Have Eyes kind of ethnic creepfest in "Angel Family," Judge Dredd taxes the stamina of the Sinfonia of London almost continuously. It's the kind of score that maintains its harmoniously exciting level of instrumental and choral depth like John Debney's contemporary Cutthroat Island, another score that fights to compensate for a filmmaking disaster. Silvestri is faithful to his various melodies in Judge Dredd, most of them intriguingly structured around five-note phrases. The title theme's overblown heroic stature is where listeners will hear some of Conti's score (at least in its brazen major-key tone), and although this idea is effective in addressing Stallone's actions on screen, listeners may be more interested in the secondary themes Silvestri offers. Usually also in five-note phrases, these ideas range from the thumping rhythm that leads up to a confrontation (and the title theme), and opposing ascending and descending string figures for drama and villainy that, especially when combined with resounding choral accompaniment, remind of Predator's space-related theme. There is both quality and harmony in almost every moment of this score, the exotic percussion and electronic embellishments of "Angel Family" the only exception. The score's weakness comes in the form of the rather transparent title theme; don't be surprised if you appreciate the bridge section of the theme on horns much more than the primary phrase. A powerfully darker cue like "Judgement Day," however, with its impressive exploration of the drama theme in the middle, represents Silvestri at his most massively melodramatic. The score was released on a combination commercial album in 1995, containing 40 minutes of Silvestri's work after a variety of incongruous rock songs. Minus the "Angel Family" cue, this listening experience is fantastic (and comes closer to a five-star rating than nearly every other solid Silvestri romp), though die hard fans will seek a 67-minute score-only bootleg that divides up the retail album's score suites into a choppier presentation that adds filler. The Goldsmith trailer music, as well as a competently arranged five-minute suite from the Silvestri score, were enthusiastically performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra for Varèse Sarabande's outstanding "Hollywood '95" compilation. Both that album and the retail Judge Dredd product (now incredibly inexpensive on the used market) are highly recommended. ****   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Alan Silvestri reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.34 (in 32 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.27 (in 30,725 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.