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Rules of Engagement: (Mark Isham) The career of
director William Friedkin has, despite its great successes, been
littered with forgettable, substandard entries. His 2000 film
Rules
of Engagement is no longer remembered as one of his projects, but
rather the controversial adaptation of a story written by the then
former Secretary of the Navy, Jim Webb, who would eventually achieve
national fame through his unlikely win of a Senate seat from Virginia.
He was so unhappy with Stephen Gaghan's screenplay and Friedkin's
interpretation of his idea that he threatened to have his name removed
from the project. Ultimately, the offensive material to Webb was
removed, but at a cost of continuity in the film. Despite having talent
all the way up and down the cast and crew, a confusing screenplay with
numerous fallacies of logic doomed
Rules of Engagement, not to
mention the shifts between courtroom theatrics and extreme gore. The
storyline follows the predictable path of an American Colonel prosecuted
for murder when he orders lethal force to be used against Yemenese
civilians who may or may not have posed a threat to the American
ambassador there. Friedkin knew from the start exactly what kind of
music he wanted to hear in
Rules of Engagement. As a matter of
fact, he had one specific piece of music in mind. He had been a fan of
Mark Isham's composition "On the Threshold of Liberty" from his 1983
solo album "Vapor Drawings," and he used this piece as the temp track
throughout this film (after yearning for years to find a suitable place
for it in one of his projects). He was very pleased when Isham accepted
the offer to actually score the entire film, adapting the previous work
into the fresh soundtrack without attempting to alter its character or
theme too dramatically. Isham's diverse career had never received much
respect for its military components until the composer proved with the
"Army Strong" commercial music of the late 2000's that he could rival
the best at patriotic, orchestral majesty. To a minor extent,
Rules
of Engagement is a preview of that sound, but its execution, as well
as the adaptation of the previous theme, is so restricted in scope and
emotion that you end up with a rather mundane listening
experience.
The original recording of "On the Threshold of Liberty"
featured electronics, deliberate rhythms, and Isham's trademark trumpet
solos. He continues all of them here. The half of the score dominated by
ambient sound design, with eerie metallic thumps and groans, is largely
unremarkable. A few such cues are actually quite difficult to tolerate.
The rhythms and trumpet theme are expanded upon quite elegantly in the
opening three cues on album and "Semper Fidelis (Always Faithful)." One
of the score's downsides is the brevity of Isham's own performances; his
trumpet work is quite compelling and will leave you wishing there was
more of it in this score. The slight electronic pulsation effect of the
original "On the Threshold of Liberty" recording is translated into
muscular percussion and brass in the opening three cues, and the roaring
attitude of "Gulf of Aden (USS Wake Island)" will indeed remind you of
the "Army Strong" commercial music. The early cues establish a forceful
atmosphere of ball-busting patriotism that is completely lost in the
remainder of the score, for Isham treats the courtroom and other scenes
with such bland, ambient synthetics that the initial five minutes of
exuberant character is a faint memory. Fans of "On the Threshold of
Liberty," which is provided at the end of this soundtrack for reference,
will hear similarities, some intriguingly subtle, between the classic
work and this newer score. But the design of the music has changed so
much that the audience for the adaptation will likely emerge from the
regular orchestral film score collecting crowd rather than early Isham
loyalists. The most peculiar aspect of
Rules of Engagement is the
simple, plain fact that "On the Threshold of Liberty" just isn't worth
the stock that Friedkin puts in it. There have been scores fashioned
after classic works before, but rarely one as frightfully boring as this
one. That's not as much a comment about Isham's talent as it is about
Friedkin's individual taste in music. The performances of the adaptation
by the London Metropolitan Orchestra are unglamorous, but functional.
The album from Milan includes two freshly recorded cues absent from the
film; unfortunately, one of these ("Gulf of Aden (USS Wake Island)") is
the highlight of the score. The other, "Breach of Peace," is easily the
worst cue overall and its omission is understandable. On the whole,
there are highlights worth investigating here, but the majority of music
is extremely dull.
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| Bias Check: | For Mark Isham reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 2.9 (in 21 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 2.88
(in 8,084 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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