Buy it... if you are prepared for a heart-pounding, dramatic powerhouse with native chants, ominous synthetic chorus, orchestral depth, weighty themes, and an excellent array of specialty flutes and percussion.

Avoid it... if you are either deterred by James Horner's repetitive thematic structures or are seeking more of the intensely personal recordings of Native American chants you heard in Thunderheart.

Horner

The Missing: (James Horner) Based on the novel "The Last Ride" by Thomas Eidson, Ron Howard's 2003 adaptation titled The Missing brings a tale of horror and desperation in the old American Southwest to the big screen. Set in the last years of the 19th Century, the film's plot is one of simple kidnapping and pursuit, with a teenage daughter taken by a group of vigilantes and the estranged family members of the girl desperately attempting to rescue the daughter before the band of criminals takes her, and others they abducted, into the wilderness of Mexico. Cate Blanchett's gritty performance as the weathered mother of the lost girl was particularly applauded by critics. On top of the basic story, however, is a touch of Native American mysticism, for the grandfather of the abducted girl (played by Tommy Lee Jones) utilizes the native tracking techniques of his culture to assist in the terrifying search. The journey undertaken by these characters allowed Howard to display the harsh realities of nature in the region while also romanticizing the landscapes to the usual level of cinematic awe that audiences expect to see. The director had collaborated with composer James Horner several times in the previous ten years, with the scores for A Beautiful Mind and Apollo 13 both nominated for Academy Awards. The collaboration had not always been fruitful for Horner's collectors, however, with both Ransom and How the Grinch Stole Christmas fading fast in his career. For The Missing, Horner would return to arguably his most inspirational genre of composition: grand ethnic drama. While Horner remains loyal to the ethnic demands of the American Southwest, he also unleashes the fully orchestral structure of epic themes that most listeners remember fondly from Legends of the Fall. More interestingly, The Missing was among a group of Horner scores in late 2003 that, for the first time in a while, did not to rely on the contributions of an advertised soloist.

Instead of following this predictable pattern, Horner replaces the single solo talent with a strong array of his usual performers on ethnic woodwinds and percussion. This is a technique that made the likes of Willow and The Mask of Zorro such memorable efforts, and the same attention to detail has a measurable effect in The Missing, too. Without a doubt, this music represented Horner's most dramatically impressive score in a great while, exuding a character built upon a simple philosophy of ethnic variance rather than the composer's typically melodramatic, thematic base. As can be heard in the very first minutes of the score, Horner's vintage sound of Native American chanting is mixed over a richly harmonic alternation of broad, orchestral tones. Even as the score becomes frightfully chaotic, especially in the fast-paced chase and rescue cues later in the work, Horner maintains that harmonic orchestral foundation behind the huge variety of crashing, tapping, chanting, and tearing accents, sometimes in correlation with a thematic statement. Horner manages this delicate balance between the romance of the story (and the land) and the frightful emotions of the harrowing, immediate task at hand very well in The Missing. For a score with horrors around every turn, the sheer determination of the story's primary characters persists though the composer's loyalty to his thematic constructs, therefore making The Missing a very listenable score. For Horner collectors and critics, the score's only weakness will be the similarity between this material's familiar progressions and those of Legends of the Fall and, to a lesser degree, Titanic. Many such listeners consider The Missing to be simply a darker variant on Legends of the Fall, a description not entirely without merit. While Horner's positioning of the themes is excellent, the actual melodies (with the primary identity of note being introduced in full in "Dawn to Dusk; The Riderless Horse") utilize all the same supporting progressions that Horner has built dramatic themes upon throughout his career.

Thus, with the primary theme existing as mostly an extension of Legends of the Fall, more weight would inevitably fall on the shoulders of the specialty instruments to carry the unique personality of The Missing. And that they do, with the overall sound of the score varying from Horner's usual orchestral sappiness to appease, at least to some extent, even the harshest of Horner detractors. He begins with his faithful, old shakuhachi flute (a regular element of his music since Willow) and adds a kena flute, bowed mouth harp, panpipes, and a collection of physical items in the percussion section on which to tap, rap, and bang. Perhaps most notable element is the widely advertised use of metallic, folding chairs as items on which to tap instead of a snare drum. Horner also includes various electronic sound effects very slightly under the other elements, along with the Indian chants and a light, synthetic choral effect that he was beginning to employ throughout the majority of his scores of this era. The result of all of these players and singers is a score that resembles pieces of Horner's other efforts, but in a refreshingly new combination. The flutes offer a hauntingly beautiful accompaniment to thematic outbursts at the outset and conclusion, with a page taken from Hans Zimmer's Beyond Rangoon after about a minute into the score. Horner also reintroduces the panpipes to set a fast, rhythmic tone, as done in Legends of the Fall, in "The Stranger" and "An Insurmountable Hurdle." After the major introduction of theme in "Dawn to Dusk; The Riderless Horse," Horner energizes the pace of the orchestra with the tingling and clanging percussion used in the panic and disaster scenes in Apollo 13 and Titanic (respectively), with the same kind of electronic circuit-clicking rhythms applied with a less sophisticated edge. Medium range drum accents in the most active cues are also reminiscent of those two previous scores. The organic sound of the shakuhachi (always a distinctively elegant instrument) is integrated in a way that suggests a howling wolf in the latter half of the score.

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The culmination of the native chants, synthetic effects, theme, and specialty instruments exists in "The Brujo's Storm," a monumentally enormous and aggressive cue that put the engaging action material from all of Horner's other scores of the early 2000's to shame. With the full ensemble unleashed in excellently mixed, reverberating layers, this cue, as well as the exciting "Rescue and Breakout," offers Horner's most intense and powerful music in several years. In this material, Horner propels the frightening action with trademark trumpet counterpoint and drum-pounding accents, but credit should be given to Horner for resisting the readily overused four-note motif that he usually employs to represent evil (never once is it heard on the album for The Missing). For listeners hoping for a reprise of Thunderheart, which remains one of Horner's most unique and intriguingly memorable scores, you may be slightly disappointed. The incorporation of the chanting into The Missing is done without the same intensely personal style as in Thunderheart, and while both are effective in their roles, Thunderheart is still the better, dedicated score for Native American chanting alone. Both are significantly better in these regards, however, than the underachieving and less inspiring Windtalkers. Overall, The Missing remains evidence that Horner is at his best when he ceases messing around with a famous soloist and concentrates on writing for a richly stocked orchestral ensemble. Due to the repetition of thematic development from previous scores, The Missing is a shade less than perfect, but you can't help but marvel at the lengths to which Horner went to produce a spooky and unique environment for this assignment. A full album from the Sony family of labels provides Horner's efforts in a very listenable and often exhilarating presentation, with the final seven minutes of "The Long Ride Home" a stunning melodramatic powerhouse. It is a score that was among the best of 2003 and worthy of serious consideration during the awards season that year, though the Academy, proving their fickle psychology, chose to nominate Horner for House of Sand and Fog, a far inferior score, instead. *****   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For James Horner reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.13 (in 98 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.25 (in 184,725 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.