Buy it... if you are prepared to appreciate an ambitious score that balances the nobility of leadership with the turbulence of fear in an orchestrally difficult, but impressive package.

Avoid it... if you expect nothing less than an overwhelmingly memorable theme to come from your large-scale Trevor Jones scores.

Jones

Thirteen Days: (Trevor Jones) The best historical/political thrillers typically involve mostly fiction, but director Roger Donaldson wanted his analysis of the Cuban Missile Crisis in Thirteen Days to be as factually true as possible. After conducting extensive background work on all the known details of the interactions between President John F. Kennedy and his inner circle during the events of October 1962, Donaldson only made small variations in character roles, mostly to allow presidential advisor Kenny O'Donnell (and thus, Kevin Costner) a more pronounced presence. Despite the difficulty of maintaining tension in a story this kind --in which all educated audience members already know the outcome-- Thirteen Days for the most part succeeds. Outside of Costner's questionable performance, every other element of the film was praised by critics and audiences. The film fared relatively well in awards nominations, but quickly lost steam thereafter and has become relatively obscure since. Aside from The Last of the Mohicans, Thirteen Days represented the best chance composer Trevor Jones had, at the time, for an Oscar nomination. A composer and instructor of great talents, Jones was considered at the time to be an artist on the brink of bursting through into the elite of the film music hierarchy. His music is almost always engaging, with a flair for dramatic themes and a well balanced blend of orchestral and electronic styles. While his scores are consistently strong, the majority of them have been written for films that did not succeed as well in the box office as many had hoped, with the only major exception being The Last of the Mohicans. Ironically, his most notorious work of the 1990's had been his scores for television films and series (such as Merlin and Cleopatra). To be involved with Thirteen Days, an enormous and potentially blockbuster mainstream film, was an enticing offer for Jones. He had not worked previously with director Roger Donaldson, however the pairing was a success before the score was even finished.

Working comfortably in London, Jones sent MP3s of a synthesized version of his score to Los Angeles and Donaldson, with all around praise resulting. The encouragement from the producers of the film to trust Jones' judgment in scoring the film at that distance led to a recording experience that Jones has often glowed about. The score for Thirteen Days was a leisurely exercise in film music production, though none of that leisure afforded in the composition of the music can be heard in its actual contents. There aren't many online film score fanatics who are old enough to have maturely felt the fear of the events of late 1962. As the history of the film conveys, at no point was the world closer to nuclear annihilation, and the script very well captures the paranoia of the two week Cuban Missile Crisis without yielding too much to the nobility of America's somewhat-immature pride. Most likely the reason for director Donaldson's immediate approval of the music for the film was the simple fact that Jones perfectly balances the same fear and pride in his score. Regardless of the patriotic slice of Americana heard in Jones' title theme, Thirteen Days is a score running scared. Its greatest asset is its almost instant injection of uneasiness after the statement of theme at the start of the score, as well as the subsequent tightening of tensions as the film progresses. With more missiles headed to Cuba and an American pilot shot down over the enemy, Jones' score continuously drives the tension levels to new heights. In "There Can Be No Deals," he reprises the frenetic action rhythms of Dark City, and the suspense reaches its climax in the frighteningly resounding pounding of orchestral hits and metallic percussion during "Death of Major Anderson." While some scores for political thrillers may be difficult to grasp on album because of their experimental instrumentation or minimalistic styles, Thirteen Days is conversely a difficult score to enjoy because it so well mirrors the scope of the tensions portrayed in the film. To this end, it is an extremely effective score.

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Fans of Jones' work for epic films typically enjoy the overwhelmingly memorable themes that accompany them. And while Thirteen Days has a very strong primary theme, it's not the same kind of "whistleable" tune that you will recall from his other works. It contains a similarly simplistic set of chord progressions, but it is dominated by strings that providing a nagging feeling of unease with slight dissonance. Even in the statement of a heroic ending in "The Sun Came Up Today," as disaster is averted, there is still an ominous tone created by high range dissonance in woodwinds and strings. The only moments of the score not to be delivered with a rumbling of bass strings, timpani, snare, or other militaristic undertones are the opening and closing tracks, in which the title theme is heralded by the expected lone trumpet and lush strings. While these elements attempt to peek through during the rest of the score, they are hindered by the necessary and welcome pull of dissonant or rhythmic tension. With a slightly melancholy embodiment in those last few tracks comes a victorious and yet saddened feeling, perhaps a foreshadowing of the assassination of JFK to occur in the following year. The outright action scenes from above Cuba and on the open seas are scored with a pulsating and gripping drive of percussive force, with the usual flair of Jones' wild percussion use. A secondary theme exists in these sequences, but their statements are so brash that it succumbs to the force of its own instrumentation (including a slight electronic edge). Jones takes the film's fears and throws them in your face with the amplification of the cues, and since the music is almost constantly heard in the film, the overall effect of Thirteen Days could be numbing. The London Symphony Orchestra is quite versed, ironically, in the performance of American patriotism, and the sheer dramatic weight of their sharp recording creates half the ambience by itself. On the whole, while the score is both noble and unsettling, as it should be, its own heavy weight causes the listening experience to be a bittersweet one. Despite being ignored by major awards groups in 2000, Thirteen Days remains one of the most noteworthy scores of the year. ****   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Trevor Jones reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.78 (in 18 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.5 (in 24,201 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.