Buy it... on the widely traded bootleg or 2011 Kritzerland album if you desire the defiantly beautiful, gospel-laced finale cue to go with the commercially available presentation of the famous "Thunderbird" suite from the score.

Avoid it... if you expect to hear more than eight to ten minutes of truly meaningful material in this score, because outside of the stylish guitar performances and that finale, there isn't much to impress on any full presentation of the short score.

Zimmer

Thelma & Louise: (Hans Zimmer) Director Ridley Scott's foray into dark comedy for 1991's Thelma & Louise was extremely well received, generating substantial awards recognition and surprising grosses. It has also become something of a pop culture icon, representing both road trips and women gone astray. Two contemporary women from Middle America with little excitement in their lives go on a vacation for a few days in their 1966 Thunderbird convertible. Along their way, they shoot and kill a drunk rapist and assume that the authorities will prosecute them, so they start a journey to Mexico while eluding both local authorities and the F.B.I. They become hardened avengers in the latter stages, robbing a store and destroying a fuel tanker. When they're finally cornered at the edge of the Grand Canyon, they famously drive their Thunderbird off the edge and plunge to their deaths. Although Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon were far from Scott's ideal choices for the lead roles, they both earned Academy Award nominations (but facing off in the same category, they both lost). The film also introduced a shirtless Brad Pitt to the mainstream and allowed fan favorite Harvey Keitel to keep his clothes on. Despite all the problems that Scott faced with the producers of Black Rain over Hans Zimmer's unappreciated score for that film, the two continued their collaboration in Thelma & Louise. Thankfully, this new assignment went as smoothly as it could have for Zimmer. The film features surprisingly little original score in its duration, but Scott was so enthusiastic about Zimmer's theme for the fade-out finale and end credits that he shot an all-new opening titles scene simply to accommodate another presentation of that theme. Zimmer, meanwhile, has always accepted praise for this theme, titled "Thunderbird," but has never particularly understood why his fans want to hear the rest of the score. "People are under the impression there is [more good music from Thelma & Louise]," Zimmer explains. "But I go around that one Thunderbird theme a couple of times, plus some little rock-n-rollish type things. I hate overstaying my welcome on these CDs, so there's just not enough. If I allowed a score-only Thelma & Louise CD, it probably would have been only 10 minutes long." On this matter, he has a good point, because while the "Thunderbird" theme (as well as the gospel-influenced finale piece) is worthy of a place in any Zimmer collection, the rest of this score is a largely forgettable series of bluesy minimalism, sparse action motifs, irritating hoedown comedy, and fragments of that primary theme.

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The constructs of Thelma & Louise are quite simple. A lonely electric guitar theme with the personality of a battered rock ballad serves as the identity of "Thunderbird" and, by its adaptation throughout the film, most of the score. Zimmer was in the process of becoming quite fond of super-stylish guitar solos at the forefront of his work. His collaboration with Pete Haycock for Thelma & Louise was an early representation of a partnership that continued in K2, True Romance, Calendar Girl, and Drop Zone, among others. The power behind the solo performances isn't as forceful as in Days of Thunder, replaced by a slightly dejected and alienating tone here. Zimmer augments Haycock's contribution with familiar keyboarding, loops, and drum pads. He makes no attempt to use his samples to specifically emulate an organic tone for the story, instead leaving a synthetic edge in nearly every cue to reinforce the disembodied rock style. In the reunion scene ("Homecoming/Railway Station"), the score approaches the new age genre if not for the stylish guitar. Two secondary identities are established by Zimmer to compliment the "Thunderbird" theme. The first is plucky Western minimalism with a harmonica and banjo, inhabiting a bluesy tone for Pitt's escaped convict. This material eventually develops into full-fledge hoedown territory, with "Bitches From Hell" (the tanker scene) previewing the more developed symphonic variant in Cool Runnings. The other secondary identity is the subtle gospel influence that very tragically but beautifully emerges in "The Decision" as the women decide to commit suicide. This music is similar to Zimmer's many other uses of soul and gospel in his scores at the time, but the duet between the guitar and voices for the "Thunderbird" theme in the first half of "The Decision" is a highlight of the score. The only other aspect of Thelma & Louise worth mentioning is the influence of Black Rain on a sort of "determination motif" that Zimmer uses to propel the protagonists to their fateful decision. Heard first in the subtly keyboarded staccato string chopping late in "Wide Awake," this idea matures in the composer's familiar action tones in "The Chase." Overall, Zimmer is correct in that there's only about ten minutes of lasting music in Thelma & Louise, but that didn't stop a First Born Records bootleg from slapping 40 minutes of it on a decent-sounding CD later in the decade. The commercial MCA album had only included the four-minute "Thunderbird" suite. In 2011, the Kritzerland specialty label pressed a slightly rearranged version of the bootleg presentation on a 1,200-copy product that sold out immediately, despite the fact that the eight minutes over the final two tracks on the bootleg were the only ones definitely worth having. ***   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

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For Hans Zimmer reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.09 (in 80 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.08 (in 253,581 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.