Buy it... if you are a casual collector of Lee Holdridge's typically superior dramatic work and want a rare chance to hear his recent continued success.

Avoid it... if the restrained and respectful style of Holdridge's Holocaust film scores of the past has not sustained your interest.

Holdridge

Unlikely Heroes: (Lee Holdridge) One of the most underrated careers in composing for television and film in the digital era is that of Lee Holdridge, who, despite rarely receiving the recognition deserved for his mass of work for television, continues to produce outstanding music while under the radar. You won't have heard a Holdridge score on the big screens at your local cineplex anytime in the last several years, but you'll likely have caught a snippet of it while you're channel searching through the biographies and documentaries that many people skip over when surfing the tube. His output for television is outstanding given the usual standard of quality that he often provides for films that don't always deserve such music. Two of Holdridge's more recent television scores include 10.5, a mini in which a massive earthquake drops much of the West Coast of America into the ocean (never a really bad idea according to many in the rest of the country), and See Arnold Run, an intriguing bio-pic following two eras in Arnold Schwarzenegger's life (and we get to see Jurgen Prochnow and Mariel Hemingway do their best Arnold and Maria imitations... both are upstaged by Roland Kickinger as the younger Schwarzenegger). Over the past eight years, however, Holdridge has become associated with high-quality documentary and television films about the Holocaust. While it may seem odd at first glance to see a Latino-born composer consistently providing some of the most compelling music for the Holocaust today, Holdridge's versatility and ability to generate extremely respectful music has caused this largely unknown body of strong music to exist with great effect. Unlikely Heroes came from the Moriah Film division of Simon Wiesenthal Center and is the most recent Holdridge entry in the genre. With half a dozen films from their studios, the best known is probably The Long Way Home, which won a documentary Oscar in 1997. Directed by Richard Trank and narrated by Sir Ben Kingsley (these films always feature star power behind the microphone), Unlikely Heroes was somewhat of a surprise for the director, who had honestly believed that the series had exhausted all of its storylines of significant interest. But with this 2003 picture, we hear the stories of Jewish resistance rather than straight Jewish victimization, with continued positive reviews as a result.

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Unlikely Heroes would be the third collaboration between Trank and composer Lee Holdridge, who also has experience on Holocaust films even beyond this one collaboration. From The Long Way Home to Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport, Holdridge's most elegant music exists partly in the form of these tragic and lyrical tributes to Jewish survival. Indeed no exception, Unlikely Heroes offers a continuation of Holdridge's sweeping and profound sensibilities for the subject. He begins with a sweet theme that could easily be adapted to a soft and fuzzy film like Splash and infuses a heavy dramatic weight in orchestration heard in projects like Old Gringo to create a traditional score that has lyricism in its melodies that will appeal to modern ears. Instead of becoming entrenched in instrumentation of the era, Holdridge instead takes liturgical melodies from several countries' origins and adapts them seamlessly into his own beautiful title theme. The film follows seven specific people as they resist the Nazis in their own unique ways, and Holdridge manages to maintain an orchestral integrity throughout the entire length of the project while interpolating more than half a dozen traditional pieces for specific individual tales. From the piano and woodwinds of the "Friedl Dicker Brandeis (The Artist)" section to the brass and percussion of the "Leon Kahn (The Partisan)" section, Holdridge exercises a remarkable restraint in his effort to maximize the respect shown to each character. The highlights of the album, however, are Holdridge's own opening and finale cues, in which lengthy variations on his lovely original theme evoke the same heartbreaking emotion in the end titles for Old Gringo. The nearly 8-minute finale (a recap of the score's adaptations), with its piano performances serving as interludes to the full ensemble's magic, is among the best cues of the year for any genre of score. A slightly belated, but highly welcomed album for Unlikely Heroes would be released in late 2004, the first available music from the composer on album since his resounding success on The Mists of Avalon three years before. While the CD sells for the price of a regular commercial album at the time of its release, don't be surprised if this Citadel album becomes difficult to find in future years. For any casual collector of Holdridge's work, Unlikely Heroes is further proof that you should scramble to obtain any new release of his typically superior work. ****

Bias Check:

For Lee Holdridge reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.75 (in 13 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.65 (in 6,293 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.