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Patriot Games: (James Horner) With a smashing
success in 1990's
The Hunt for Red October, Paramount gave the
green light to a franchise of films based on Tom Clancy novels featuring
the American intelligence officer Jack Ryan. While
Patriot Games
and its successors don't technically qualify as sequels, each has been
compared to
Red October because of that film's strong supporting
cast and remarkable technical achievements, especially in the areas of
sound and sound effects. Film score enthusiasts also held Basil
Poledouris' score for
Red October in extremely high regard from
its debut, making James Horner's task of scoring the following two
sequels a bit more challenging by the simple fact that fans would
inevitable compare the Clancy/Ryan scores to each other. Without a
doubt,
Red October set an expected level of orchestral and
thematic excellence for the entire series that Horner would need to
contend with, despite the franchise's change of lead actor and crew.
Unfortunately, all of that raw, majestic power created by Poledouris in
Red October is completely lost in
Patriot Games, a curious
change in direction regardless of the vast change in setting and plot.
Like its predecessor,
Patriot Games was a high budget,
action-packed powerhouse of a film that begged for a strong score to be
delivered in its favor, and there was the opportunity for Horner to
write his first monstrous hit in several years. Instead, audiences were
treated to an overly simplistic and monotonous, Gaelic reconstruction of
Thunderheart. The score would mark a return to the ineffective
and somewhat cheesy, electronically dominated action scores that stunk
up Arnold Schwarzenegger films like
Red Heat and
Commando
in the 1980's. But, of course, with that Gaelic tilt.
Comparisons to
Thunderheart are probably the
most viable, for both 1992 films featured a rhythmic, synthetic blend
with similar specialty instruments and a sense for minimalism and lack
of theme. The important distinction to make when comparing
Patriot
Games and
Thunderheart, however, is that the latter film was
very well served by the restrained approach; its score was a magnificent
compliment to the spirituality of that film. But
Patriot Games is
a completely different animal, and needed an entirely different kind of
approach to its music. Horner's end product for the thriller is
contemplative, subdued, and introverted, with no respect at all for the
heroic deeds of the main character (no matter how much Ryan doesn't want
to be a hero). Horner's music, beyond its obvious lack of substance,
suffers for two reasons: first, its construct is unnecessarily low
budget in sound. Hearing synthesizer samples from those old
Schwarzenegger days is a slap in the face for a film of this mainstream
caliber. There are extended sequences of extremely familiar clanging,
random flute bursts, and light percussive rhythms... a combination not
only tired in sound, but begging questions of ethnic appropriateness.
Frenetic arrays of synthesized samples and a constant banging and
clanging of irritating metallic synths eventually lead to a badly
underplayed cue in "Electronic Battlefield" that fails to offer any of
the dramatic punch that the scene demanded. The second major blunder in
the score for
Patriot Games is Horner's total lack of
consideration for the Jack Ryan character and his family. As it would
become badly evident in his score for
Clear and Present Danger,
Ryan has no theme devoted to him, and no sensitivity built for his
family. While the character's smaller role in
Red October made
such an omission by Poledouris more viable, Ryan and his family's
integral roles in
Patriot Games necessitate a stronger thematic
presence for them.
Even the Gaelic influences, representing the
terrorists, are half-hearted. The Clannad song proves to be a more loyal
and interesting performance than Horner's tepid adaptation of a
traditional song over the opening and closing moments of the film. While
the vocals in those cues may be the highlight of the score for some,
they still exist in a daze that defeats the daunting message of the
film. The gain mix of these vocals in the film itself is suspect as
well, perhaps due in part to the lack of true enunciation of these
performances. On the whole,
Patriot Games is a rare film that
suffered to a degree because of Horner's low-budget meanderings. His
refusal to develop the ethnic ties to the villains of the film and
address Jack Ryan and his family made the score one-dimensional and
uninteresting. The curious aspect of this score's failure is the
inclusion of the Clannad song; with the style of Enya and others
dominating the music scene in the early 90's, Horner could have used his
own keyboards to offer a far more ethnically powerful new-age style of
score for
Patriot Games (and maybe it would have even been more
appropriate than such leanings in
Titanic). The album offers a
rich bass region in the action sequences, but accents like the wailing
flute aren't as clearly rendered as they could be. A running time of 45
minutes is a surprising detriment to the score, easily boring veteran
Horner collectors who have heard superior representations of each idea
in the score with greater effectiveness elsewhere, including the more
convincing album for
The Devil's Own. From the sound of the final
product, it would seem on the surface that either Horner was horribly
restrained by the command of the film's director and/or budget, or he
simply did not have the time or interest in producing a superior score
for the project. Either way, when considering the potential in such a
great franchise,
Patriot Games can easily be considered as one of
Horner's more frustrating blunders.
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