Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... only if you are an extreme James Horner collector and are interested in eight or so minutes of a decent orchestral theme unrelated to the rest of the score. Avoid it... if the idea of 45 minutes of Horner's crashing piano, snare, and chime motif, along with a lot of barely audible underscore, isn't worth the now rare album. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
The Pelican Brief: (James Horner) Director Alan Pakula's films have never been inclined to demand large-scale or thematically complex music out of their composers. From Klute to Presumed Innocent, a Pakula effort is typically a high-quality suspense story about corruption in the genres of law, journalism, and politics. The thriller The Pelican Brief falls into all of these categories, with its story closely following John Grisham's best-selling novel of the same name. Julia Roberts is a law student with a sharp mind and an inquisitive nature, and her theory about a conspiracy behind the deaths of two Supreme Court justices inks her name on the perpetrators' hit list. She teams with Denzel Washington who, as a reporter, dodges the same assassination attempts on their lives in an effort to get the truth revealed. With a seemingly snug fit between Grisham and Pakula in place, the duties of the composer would fall upon James Horner, whose popularity was nearing its height in the industry even though he was still branching out into projects that didn't fall into his normal realm of operation. With many similarities in construct, The Pelican Brief would be the same score for James Horner that Presumed Innocent was a few years earlier for John Williams. Both introverted, tense, piano-dominated works, Horner's ability to create the same sophistication of atmosphere would fall far short of Williams' ability to do the same. Thus, while Presumed Innocent and The Pelican Brief essentially use the same spirit of underscore (despite a more chase-oriented action tilt in the latter), Williams' tackling of the job is leagues beyond Horner's music in quality and class. Like his scores for the Tom Clancy/Jack Ryan films that debuted in the same era of Horner's career (Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger), The Pelican Brief is a largely underachieving and uninspired score. Playing once again on ideas that Horner had already established in other works, there is little worth mentioning about The Pelican Brief that defines it as a unique work. Not all of Horner's minimalistic efforts are so dull as The Pelican Brief; he has proven with Thunderheart and The Spitfire Grill that some outstanding personality can be expressed in his softer works. And while The Pelican Brief has the same character-centered focus as Searching for Bobby Fischer and The Man Without a Face, it restrains its emotions to a far less dramatic level. Before diving into the faults of the underscore for The Pelican Brief, it should be mentioned that the effort does offer two cues that will likely appeal to fans of the scores mentioned above. The "Darby's Theme" and "Airport Goodbye" cues present about eight minutes of fully orchestral theme; not unique in its own characteristics, but built on a similar, flowing-string structure. The former track is seemingly a concert piece from the score since it was not used in the final cut of the film. The latter cue may grace the end credits with thematic fluidity, but the rest of the score in the film is an exercise in Horner's usual suspense tactics. Although Horner's typical piano crashes during moments of cinematic distress are nothing new, he takes them beyond simple crashing and uses then to thrash the listener with their ferocious rumblings. All to often, a pleasant, rambling piano motif or extended sequence of barely audible strings is interrupted by one of these thrashes. Tapping percussion, including a light snare in consistent rhythms, leads the score from one non-descript suspense cue to the next. When matters of importance occur, the crashing of chimes --in similar fashion to the piano-- will also raise many memories for Horner collectors. Light clicking and high-toned electronic choir over electric bass and tingling keyboard rhythms, such as those in "Researching the Brief," would foreshadow The Spitfire Grill. Such music would make for a very consistent listening experience if not for the crashing, staggering chase sequences, which plays tricks with you by crashing every time the nervous Roberts looks over her shoulder at something. There are few direct, lengthy quotations of music from Horner's previous work, but a Horner collector will easily get the impression that the composer was not even attempting to break new conceptual ground with The Pelican Brief. A lengthy album extends the suffering; some pressings of the now out-of-print album contained faulty laser engraving that makes it difficult for various CD players to recognize the parameters of each track. If Horner's music was any better, there'd be reason to worry about this. ** Track Listings:
Total Time: 52:01
* not included in the film All artwork and sound clips from The Pelican Brief are Copyright © 1994, Big Screen 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 6/15/98, updated 3/24/05. Review Version 4.1 - PHP (Filmtracks Publications). Copyright © 1998-2005, Christian Clemmensen. All rights reserved. |
