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Outbreak: (James Newton Howard) Tales about the
ultimate plague have bounced around in science fiction novels for
decades, for mysterious, deadly diseases remain a dark territory in
which the average person can easily be scared in a story. In Wolfgang
Petersen's
Outbreak, an all-star cast is assembled to combat the
spread of a plague that is initially seen in Africa some 40 years ago.
By the 1990's, the plague manifests itself in an African monkey that is
being smuggled into the United States for sale as a pet, but before its
inevitable escape, it manages to infect a human carrier and the disease
spreads across the nation at an alarming rate. This plague in particular
is a nasty one, liquifying internal organs and killing a person in a
day, and the government is inclined to destroy the outbreak areas with
massive bombs. The film was a serviceable thriller, gaining respectable
reviews and returns at the box office, and for composer James Newton
Howard, it would follow one of his more diverse action scores of his
career,
Waterworld, a year prior. While Howard has never really
been associated first and foremost with massive action scores, the roots
of his scores such as
King Kong later in his career were already
well developed by the time
Outbreak rolled along. And Howard
holds nothing back in
Outbreak, with the recording including
impressive symphonic sequences merged with performances by African
vocalist Lebo M., synthesizer expert Steve Porcaro, and the L.A. Master
Chorale. Howard's instrumental creativity is often marked by his
inflated team of orchestrators, and for this project, he extended his
reputation of combining disparate sounds into a product that is
interesting at the very least, and enjoyable in many parts. While he
stopped a step short of providing the plague with a theme or motif of
its own, Howard does substitute strong ambient effects.
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The one major detractor of the
Outbreak score is
that is has no thematic progression, no development of a motif that
grows more ominous as the plague spreads. More than most other
composers, however, Howard achieves effective scores without the need of
a strong thematic presence, and
Outbreak is one of those
occasions where the lack of a clearly defined theme or growing sense of
doom is slightly disappointing, but not restrictive. Howard scores the
moment in each case, opening with a modern synthetic rhythm over the
weak theme that does exist in the score, with choral backing and a
series of rhythmically falling strings that set the mood of peril well.
A highlight of this score, "Main Titles" is remarkably similar to
suspense cues that would later define the composer's career. The only
notable performance by Lebo M. on the album follows, and muscular brass
overlay a bed of African percussion that we hear before a small village
infected with the plague is firebombed off the map. Among other
highlights are "Casey Rips His Suit," in which a frantic blast of
dissonance is replaced by a choral anthem of terror. Also of interest is
"Jimbo Gets Sick," in which another dissonant crescendo is contributed
to by metallic scraping and string whining that are mutilated so that
they resemble the distant crying of monkeys. Most of the film score
collectors who will wish to seek out
Outbreak on album, however,
will be targeting the large-scale action cues, which exist in often a
perfect marriage between the electronic rhythms and orchestral
performances. While these cues seem numerous in the film, one strange
and disappointing aspect of the
Outbreak album is the lack of
some of the great action cues heard in the film. In "Casey Goes Down"
and "A Little Resistance," we hear the meat of Howard's action scoring
for the film, but it seems that in an effort to parse through the
material to produce a 30-minute album for Varèse Sarabande, a
significant portion of the heightened action was dropped in favor of the
more suspenseful or downright positive reinforcement material (such as
the quietly beautiful "Robbie's Bedside"). Overall, a strong score
hindered by a short album.
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| Bias Check: | For James Newton Howard reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 3.31 (in 53 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.16
(in 58,041 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
