Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... only if you are capable of appreciating one-man orchestras, for Turbulence 2 is a rather mundane desktop computer score that barely lifts off with any interesting and fresh ideas for the genre. Avoid it... if you have allergic reactions to those awful-sounding synthetic "orchestra hits" that software of the 1990's once produced. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
Turbulence 2: Fear of Flying: (Don Davis) One of the lesser discussed drawbacks of the attacks on America on September 11th, 2001 was the fact that it ushered out the era of airplane hijacking movies. So bankable was this genre in the late 1990's that a mediocre film like 1997's Turbulence could actually be considered sequel material. When that push for more cash from the concept came in 1999, Trimark dumped the cast and storyline of the first film and replaced them with another plane load of people who not only are afraid to fly, but are once again in the ride of their lives. The plot is one that we've seen a thousand times: a commercial airliner filled with frightened flyers trying to make an (unfortunate) journey from Seattle to Los Angeles are hijacked by a group of non-English speaking, angry-faced Czechs who possess various deadly weapons of mass destruction and want to get revenge for... well, you get the idea. If everyone on board was naked and suffered from herpes outbreaks, then maybe this film would have been worth watching. Luckily for bored theatre goers, Turbulence 2: Fear of Flying was a straight-to-video venture, though it should be said that the movie's poster art (identical to that on the soundtrack cover) is delightfully politically incorrect in a post-9/11 world. One part of Turbulence that was thrown away was Shirley Walker's score and its associated themes and motifs. Sequel director David Mackay had worked with orchestrator-turned-composer Don Davis twice before on low budget affairs, and why Davis would accept Turbulence 2: Fear of Flying as an assignment, especially in light of his recent success with The Matrix, is baffling. The story and two-dimensional characters are stock, and as you might expect, the score is as well. Davis performed and arranged the entire score for Turbulence 2 on his desktop computer, which isn't necessarily an automatic negative. But just like a film with a plot and characters we don't care about, Davis' score makes use of all the same old synthetic, B-film action cliches that we expect to hear from the software available to less successful composers at the time. From the synthetic "orchestra hits" (for which samples really hadn't mastered at the time) to the flat electronic snare that predictably accompanies any militaristic slug-fest in the skies, the score provides no twists, no refreshing material, and no spur of the moment creativity on the part of Davis. Had some of the action rhythms (especially "Cockpit Fight") been recorded with an orchestral ensemble of decent size, perhaps something useful could have come from these ideas. The film contains a few lame character-building moments at the start and end which require a more humanly touch by Davis, and even his underdeveloped scoring of these moments with a handful of half-hearted major key chords seems to poke fun at the flatness of those characters. Soft, false string harmony for the pleasant tones of "Hug Wrap Up" will remind of some of Randy Edelman's more stale keyboarded work. The only barely redeeming highlights of the score are the first and last cues of the film, which both feature a more appropriately charged rhythm from the Jerry Goldsmith library of sounds (mainly Total Recall) and a somewhat muted theme. There are pieces of Goldsmith ideas for his own 90's hijacking films that Davis appropriately adapts in Turbulence 2, though their constructs aren't particularly noticeable unless you strain to hear them. Overall, Turbulence 2 displays nothing more than a library of previously conjured synthesizer trials that Davis could have arranged in his sleep for this score. Most of them aren't offensive, and it's probable that they work fine in the film. But who would want to sit and listen to this mindless crap? And 72 minutes of it, no less? The album was the first release of an American score by the Pacific Time label, which up to October 2000 had provided CDs of a variety of soundtrack music from the European scene. The fact that the score was cheap (to purchase the rights to) likely caused the 72 minute-presentation, but this is a score that needed to be condensed down to 20 minutes and combined with other, similar Davis projects. Unfortunately, despite the impressive production values of this product, Pacific Time would not venture into the American music scene for many significant scores hereafter. ** Track Listings:
Total Time: 72:54
All artwork and sound clips from Turbulence 2: Fear of Flying are Copyright © 2000, Pacific Time. 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 10/2/00, updated 11/18/07. Review Version 4.1 - PHP (Filmtracks Publications). Copyright © 2000-2013, Christian Clemmensen. All rights reserved. |
