 |
|
 |
|
 | |||||||||
| • | Newest Major Reviews: | . | • | This Week's Most Popular Reviews: | • | Best-Selling Albums: | ||
| . |
1. Nim's Island 2. The Life Before Her Eyes 3. Horton Hears a Who! 4. Leatherheads 5. The Spiderwick Chronicles | . | . |
1. Moulin Rouge 2. Gladiator 3. POTC: Curse of the Black Pearl 4. Star Wars: A New Hope 5. Edward Scissorhands |
6. Pearl Harbor 7. Schindler's List 8. Titanic 9. Braveheart 10. Home Alone | . | . |
1. Varèse Sarabande 25th 2. The Last of the Mohicans 3. Legends of the Fall 4. Schindler's List 5. LOTR: Return of the King (Set) |
 | ||||||||
|
|
|
Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... only if you recognize that Fiedel's music is an acquired taste and/or you liked the underscore you heard in the film. Avoid it... if you seek the more recognizable music from the film, including the tango and the Jamie Lee Curtis hotel dance song. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
The score by Fiedel, on the other hand, failed to establish either a style or theme. Its construction is based upon several choppy motifs that carry it minimally during its action sequences. The lack of a theme is painfully present in the hard-edged opening credits, when Fiedel's leading five-note motif (a rip-off of his own Terminator theme) slams its way through several abrupt performances before largely disappearing in the rest of the score (outside of the "Escape from the Chateau" cue as well). The sustained action music throughout the score suffers from the same choppy rhythms and annoying synthetic (or not... hard to tell) string accompaniment that meanders brutally through the background. At its height, this action music is a cheap imitation of stock Jerry Goldsmith action cues, but without any creativity in instrumentation or motif. In its statements of themes, the score (during, for instance, the silver screen "Nuclear Kiss" moment) presents its harmonies in the same wishy-washy fashion that Dennis McCarthy often does in his television scores... with no bite and no resounding power. The sound quality of the production during Fiedel's action cues is also suspect, with the orchestra recorded as though it was performing in a closet. A better mix of resonance would have greatly helped to alleviate the staggered, synthetic sound of the score. The best of Fiedel's material, believe it or not, is the slower underscore for which he occasionally uses modern keyboarding or a trumpet to accentuate love scenes or espionage sequences. The album is another major detraction from this overall picture. As mentioned before, the songs "I Never Thought I'd See the Day" and "Por Una Cabeza" are the musical highlights of the film, and yet, neither appears on the album. Leading to hundreds upon hundreds of angry movie-goers who purchased the album for these tracks, the lack of these two pieces on the album is an embarrassment to Sony. Instead, we are presented with five hard rock songs, few of which represent the style of the music as heard in the film. To make matters worse, an overly generous portion of Fiedel's score occupies the rest of the album, with a handful of cues that are completely unnecessary on the pressing. Combined with the flat sound quality of the product as a whole, the True Lies album is a waste of time and money. For such an outstanding film, it is hard to imagine just how such a mediocre score and disgraceful album could have resulted. Fiedel's career in scoring top-level films would end with True Lies, with the composer failing to land even the subsequent Terminator film. For die-hard True Lies fans, the good news is that "I Never Thought I'd See the Day" dance song for Curtis and "Por Una Cabeza" tango can be found readily on other albums, but that does not excuse the lack of a complete and interesting album for this particular film. The score and album cannot be recommended at any level. The film itself, however, is a modern classic, making it a rare case in which a classic action film has an ineffective and uninteresting score. *
Insert includes no extra information about the score or film. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
