Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if your heart could be stirred by the solemn and defiant merging of the complexly vengeful Rambo scores with echoes of trumpet performances from Patton. Avoid it... if, despite the impressive tribute recording to the victims of September 11th, 2001, your primary interest in the score is based on originality in construct and instrumentation. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
The Last Castle: (Jerry Goldsmith) In a rare return to acting without directing at the same time, Robert Redford places himself in the role of a decorated American general who refuses to obey an executive order and is thus sent to a military prison called "the castle." His stubborn will to resist the unreasonable actions of the prison's warden in The Last Castle earn him the respect of the men, and only through his sacrifice in an uprising can he bring proper justice to its confines. The Rod Lurie film was undoubtedly too long in running time, dragging its story out for over two hours and hitting the patriotism and redemption buttons too frequently. While making use of a few blues songs during that time, The Last Castle was among the last five scores written and recorded by the legendary Jerry Goldsmith, taking advantage of the composer's rich history of uplifting patriotic works. Forgotten by some listeners in the composer's late string of ethnically powerful action and solemn mystery scores was the fact that Goldsmith was very capable of assembling a rousing, country-first score for brass and percussion. Thirty years prior, his military marches for Patton and MacArthur burst into movie music history, establishing Goldsmith as an artist with a mastery of pompous and even arrogant military music. That style of writing from Goldsmith would turn bittersweet in his three Rambo scores, producing a haunting theme for a fallen soldier that remains atop his resume. In the 1990's, Goldsmith's military-related work had more of a swashbuckling edge, with scores such as Air Force One and Executive Decision melding patriotism with all out adventure. All of the aforementioned scores are dominated by lead performances by brass instruments, with bold themes that often graced the composer's compilations and concerts. In The Last Castle, as the gritty, court-martialed general leads his insurrection, Goldsmith returns to emotional territory that is closest in relation to the complexly vengeful Rambo scores, but with a prominent role for trumpet and rolling motif usage that will very obviously remind even mainstream listeners of Patton. For a film that was advertised as having a substantial amount of action, The Last Castle is treated to an introspective score, exploring the patriotism within the context of tense resiliency. Only in a handful of cues does a fully rousing performance of defiance break the mostly reflective underscore. The tone for The Last Castle, while it may contain the same basic elements as all of the scores mentioned above (and serve a film for which a highly dramatic advertisement campaign was launched), was among Goldsmith's most reserved in years. The majority of cues is opened and closed by rapid snare bursts, with minimal strings and electronic rhythms to set the necessary military atmosphere. On top of that, two or three brass motifs repeat unwaveringly throughout every cue, very predictably and with a consistently sorrowful and frustrated mood. These rising and falling statements function almost like a slow ostinato for various brass layers, which is where the comparisons to Goldsmith's echoing trumpet call in Patton become inevitable. The short bursts of actual, ballsy action music resemble very much the composer's Rambo III score from 1989, as well as Executive Decision to a lesser extent. The use of the timpani to pound out the bass region of Goldsmith's action cues had become a staple, as had the deliberate tempos and emphasized spacing of brass whole notes. When you compare all of Goldsmith's patriotic action themes for many years, it becomes evident that the meter and placement of lengthier accent notes in his themes are typically pretty much the same. This similarity causes the themes to have that "Goldsmithian" sound that is always enjoyable, if not superb in its nobility. Many point to First Knight as a prime example of this. But the sound was also growing old and predictable by the 1990's, and Goldsmith again in The Last Castle failed to take any chances with his established structures or instrumentation. No substantial secondary themes exist, and the electronic effects, often Goldsmith's tool for creativity, are largely diminished. When not engaged in development of the primary theme, the score often meanders aimlessly with only the help of slight bass string tones. The remarkable predictability and lack of experimentation in this score causes it to pass by very quickly on album, though part of that comment results from the existence of under 35 minutes of score material on that product. Because long sequences in the film exist without Goldsmith's material, the score as a whole has less of an impact outside of the most intentionally poignant scenes. For the collectors of the composer's works, there's nothing to really catch your attention once you've established that The Last Castle is an extremely stereotypical score for Goldsmith. It is the kind of derivative, patriotic music with a melancholy heart that many had come to expect from the composer for portrayals of rebellious patriots. As usual for the era, the engineering of the score is marvelous, especially enhancing the few full performances of the primary theme on trumpet with resounding harmony from bass strings. Ironically, it was the terrorist attack on America in September of 2001 that caused this album to be of note. With the attack occurring in the waning days of the film's post-production, Goldsmith re-arranged the theme he had written to represent the prison and labeled the recording "September 11, 2001." Interestingly, the superb trumpeteering by Malcolm McNab and the seemingly more inspiring orchestral accompaniment for this rendition of the theme (led by muscular piano) are a remarkable aspect of an otherwise solid, but average Goldsmith album. Only three minutes in length, the tribute to the victims of the attack is a noteworthy move by Goldsmith, especially given how close it came to the time of his death, and he was fortunate enough to record the piece for an already patriotic film due to awkwardly lucky timing (had he been scoring Along Came a Spider at the time instead, such a tribute would have been more difficult to manage). The album unfortunately contains two bluesy songs, and although they fit the prison environment quite well, the final one significantly diminishes the mood of the attack tribute, a memorial cue that undoubtedly should have been presented as the final track on the album. On the whole, while The Last Castle is certainly stronger than his other 2000 and 2001 scores, collectors who have heard his work for many decades will find very little that doesn't reflect or repeat the previous patriotic efforts in his career. *** Track Listings:
Total Time: 43:06
All artwork and sound clips from The Last Castle are Copyright © 2001, Decca Records. The reviews and notes contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Filmtracks Publications. Audio clips can be heard using RealPlayer but cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 10/17/01, updated 1/25/09. Review Version 4.1 - PHP (Filmtracks Publications). Copyright © 2001-2013, Christian Clemmensen. All rights reserved. |
