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Warriors of Virtue: (Don Davis) There have been
countless attempts to combine the mysticism of
Star Wars and
Wizard of Oz through the years, and unfortunately most of them
have proven to be lame. Production on
Warriors of Virtue began
not long after
The Pagemaster essentially told the same story. A
boy who is a social outcast is guided by nature and a wise man with a
book into a fantasy world where the boy must help save the day. In
Warriors of Virtue, Hong Kong director Ronnie Yu forces upon the
audience the same presentation of good versus evil that requires fine
execution to be successful when compared to its peers. Shoddy effects,
obvious overacting, and characters (and worlds) that nobody really cares
about all plagued
Warriors of Virtue, but one of its redeeming
factors was a large-scale orchestral score by composer and orchestrator
Don Davis. Best known for his orchestration work for James Horner, Davis
was branching out into his own composing career in the mid-1990's, and
his involvement with the production of
Warriors of Virtue began
early. Introduced by the filmmakers to the concepts in 1994, Davis wrote
a concert piece inspired by the film for the Breckenridge Music Festival
in 1995. His continued involvement during pre-production and photography
allowed him to become very familiar with the characters and concepts of
the fantasy world in the story, and also allowed him to write his
material at a leisurely pace. A 1996 album release of the score by the
budding specialty label Prometheus (with Davis' usual creative track
titles) preceded the wide 1997 opening of the film, which bombed after
poor critical reviews. The album remained popular, however, because it
was among the first releases of Davis' compositional work, and with his
career launched by
The Matrix, demand for the
Warriors of
Virtue score has outlived the film.
The diversity of Davis' entire career spans a wide
variety of different scoring styles. In the mid-90's, many listeners
were only familiar with Davis' music of an electronic nature, and even
when
The Matrix rolled along at the end of the decade, few knew
that Davis had a lushly romantic and harmonically heroic side. In the
case of
Warriors of Virtue, there is much pomp to be impressed
by, with several rousing orchestral and choral themes. Many of the noble
action sequences, though lacking the creative refinement of his later
works, are extremely satisfying. The problem with this score --if you
could even term it as such-- is that Davis' work as one of Horner's
orchestrators betrays him throughout the score. This score easily
belongs to the same family of Horner's fantasy/adventure music as
The
Pagemaster,
The Rocketeer, and
Krull. Because of these
extremely close stylistic ties to Horner's work, it was difficult at its
release to exactly pinpoint Davis' own unique style. At the same time,
however, you can't point a finger at any particular overarching aspect
of
Warriors of Virtue and declare that it takes too much from any
one other score. Its personality is derived from the purely ambiguous
and adventurous fun that often accompanies Horner's music for the
children's fantasy genre. Little snippets of counterpoint here and there
are clearly references to Horner's work, and these moments of
replication most often recall
The Rocketeer. The balance between
sweeping adventure themes, romantic interludes, and prancing kiddie
rhythms for lighter moments of character interaction adheres to the
Horner formula. One place where Davis does deviate, however, is in the
strict coherence of his thematic development. There are several major
ideas (among minor, recurring motifs) that grace
Warriors of
Virtue, but they aren't as neatly wrapped as those in the Horner
equivalents.
The score's first offerings are, unfortunately, its
weakest; it takes a long time for
Warriors of Virtue to get
rolling on album, though the generous length of the product forgives the
slow start with engaging material that begins in "The Vortex and the
Dare" and continues thereafter. The score's themes are only provided in
hints in the first seven cues, with introduction cues that seem
surprisingly understated. But with "The Lifespring Rhapsody" and "Forces
of Nature," Davis unleashes his themes as the opening volley of nearly
an hour of symphonic and choral harmony. The title theme for
Warriors
of Virtue represents the fantasy world, and it receives full
treatments at 1:40 into "The Lifespring Rhapsody" and, of course, at the
outset of "Theme of Tao." Secondary themes are difficult to pinpoint to
individual characters, though the score has a heroic theme often
accompanied by choir that announces itself with elegance at the end of
"Encounter of the Roo Kind" (and no, the theme doesn't seem to represent
the Roo Warriors in any of their other cues). The princess Elysia and
the evil Komodo both appear in cues that are surprisingly weak on volume
and development. An action motif introduced in "Forces of Nature" is
a grand compensation, though, with some swashbuckling spirit raising
memories of
The Pagemaster. During the score's most robust and
harmonic material, concentrated in six cues between "The Lifestring
Rhapsody" and "Encounter of the Roo Kind," Davis draws the best
performances out of the Denver Symphony Orchestra and its chorus. The
score loses cohesion thereafter, though early portions of "Planet of the
Roo-Warriors" feature some of the dynamic dissonance that fans of
The
Matrix will appreciate. On the whole, Davis' music here is indeed
derivative of James Horner's works for the same genre, but
Warriors
of Virtue is entertaining nevertheless. The song album for the film
only includes four tracks of Davis' material, so score fans should only
seek this Prometheus specialty release.
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| Bias Check: | For Don Davis reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 3.2 (in 10 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.02
(in 43,269 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes notes about both the film and the score.
