Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... only if you recognize that Brad Fiedel's limited style is an acquired taste or if you specifically noticed the score positively in the context of the film. Avoid it... if you seek either a competent action score or the more recognizable source music from the film, including the stylish tango and the Jamie Lee Curtis hotel dance song. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
True Lies: (Brad Fiedel) One of the most popular pure action films of the 1990's, True Lies has it all: Arnold Schwarzennegger, large explosions, silly humor, Charlton Heston (exchanging his rifle for an eye patch), suggestive dancing, half-naked women, and, of course, crazed Arabs. That last part makes True Lies particularly politically incorrect in a post-9/11 world, with cable channels not as eager to show a film that includes portrayals of Islamic terrorists as raging lunatics who fire guns into the air indiscriminately, proclaim the "Death to America" line of thinking, and successfully detonate a nuclear bomb on American territory. In 1994, though, it was all good entertainment. The film's balance between style and senseless action, from the elegance of stylish tango dancing to the brute force of unparalleled public restroom destruction, required a similar range of styles from its music. Director James Cameron turned to his previous collaborator, Brad Fiedel, to provide a score for True Lies that would coexist with several prominent song placements. Fiedel's music for the Terminator films was serviceable, but not embraced widely by film music fans, the majority of whom were unaccustomed to the synthesized style of the composer's creations in the pre-Media Ventures days. Fiedel had, for his previous projects, engaged the films with an array of synthesizers, but for the larger scale of the True Lies production, he also employed a moderately sized orchestra with the help of veteran composer Shirley Walker. Cameron's loyalty to Fiedel would be questioned (especially after his wildly successful reunion with James Horner for Titanic a few years later) when Fiedel's score failed to garner the same praise that True Lies received as a film. In context, most mainstream viewers considered the musical highlights to be the insertion of the "I Never Thought I'd See the Day" song by Sade for Jamie Lee Curtis' striking dancing sequence in the hotel and the use of the "Por Una Cabeza" by Carlos Gardel for the espionage-related tango scenes. The score by Fiedel, on the other hand, failed to establish either a style or a convincing theme. Its construction is based upon several choppy motifs that carry it minimally during its action sequences and are otherwise absent. The lack of a strong, fluid 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 "Escape from the Chateau"). The sustained action music throughout the score suffers from the same choppy rhythms and annoying synthetic (or not; it's hard to tell) string accompaniment that meanders brutally through the background. The electronic samples used by Fiedel in many places betray the limited capabilities of his library, sounding appropriate for a film seven or eight years older. The mix of individual groups of musicians in this material is awful, with horns and trumpets misbalanced within the same recording, thus restricting any minimal flow the theme may have had. At its height, this action music is a cheap imitation of stock Jerry Goldsmith material of the era, but without any creativity in instrumentation or style in performance. In its statements of broader romance, the score (during, for instance, the silver screen "Nuclear Kiss" moment) presents its harmonies in the same wishy-washy fashion that Dennis McCarthy often explores with mundane results in his television scores, with no bite and no resounding power. Even outside of the dry action cues, the sound quality of the recording is also suspect, with the orchestra sounding as though it was performing in a closet. A better mix of wet resonance would have greatly helped to alleviate the staggered, synthetically grating personality of the score. The best of Fiedel's contribution, believe it or not, is the slower material for which he occasionally uses contemporary keyboarding, snappy rhythm-setters, or a muted trumpet, among other soloists, to accentuate scenes of snazzy romance or espionage. The composer doesn't even attempt to provide the crazed terrorists with any musical identity; a stereotypical Middle Eastern motif may have been out of place had it been employed, but a cue like "Island Suite," as scored, has no real sense of menace or impending doom that good villains of this kind deserve. Fiedel's sense for tension is unconvincing. The conclusive "Harry Saves the Day" barely makes an attempt to weave the title theme into a heroic adaptation, instead following the predictable path of anonymity. 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 product for these tracks, the lack of these pieces on the album is an inexcusable embarrassment to Sony. Instead, we are presented with five hard rock songs, few of which represent the style of the music actually 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 relatively inactive cues that are completely unnecessary on the pressing. Combined with the flat sound quality of the product as a whole, the music on the True Lies album is a waste of time and money. For such an outstanding film, it is hard to imagine just how this mediocre score and disgraceful album could have resulted. Fiedel's career in scoring top-level blockbusters would thankfully end with True Lies, and the composer failed to land an assignment to even the subsequent Terminator film. For die-hard True Lies fans, the good news is that the "I Never Thought I'd See the Day" dance song for Curtis and the "Por Una Cabeza" tango can be found readily on other albums. But that does not excuse the lack of a complete (or even adequate) album for this particular film, and 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 fantastic action picture is forced to carry an ineffective and uninteresting score. * Track Listings:
Total Time: 70:42
All artwork and sound clips from True Lies are Copyright © 1994, Lightstorm Music. 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 4/24/03, updated 3/26/09. Review Version 4.1 - PHP (Filmtracks Publications). Copyright © 2003-2013, Christian Clemmensen. All rights reserved. |
