: (Jerry Goldsmith) It has
always been strikingly unfathomable that a storyline as tightly woven as
that of James Patterson's popular novel somehow became twisted into Lee
Tamahori's ridiculously incoherent 2001 adaptation,
. Technically a prequel to
, Morgan
Freeman returns as detective Alex Cross, and that fact alone is really
the only highlight of this senseless abduction thriller. As unremarkable
as the film's supposed "surprise" ending is Jerry Goldsmith's extremely
pedestrian score. After a variety of very strong scores in 1998 and
1999, the composer entered the 2000's in extremely underwhelming
fashion. In the early 1990's, Jerry Goldsmith introduced the first
glimpses of how he would score modern suspense and horror films. A
perfect example of this was
, an otherwise meaningless
score that happened to have a haunting end title theme. As the decade
progressed, Goldsmith began repeating his trademark motifs of this genre
of scoring into his music for dramatic and adventure films, leading to a
late-era, "modern Goldsmith sound" that became less and less interesting
with each incarnation. Disappointments such as
(despite whatever guilty pleasure material exists in
the minority of those works) caused veteran Goldsmith fans, those who
embraced
as the Goldsmith
standard, to lose confidence in the composer. This concern over the
substandard originality of Goldsmith's last few years of output does not
necessary entail that these efforts were becoming less effective in
their roles within the films, but rather, it pointed towards a
disturbing direction of repetition, especially in this particular genre
of film.
Perhaps most at fault for Goldsmith's decline was his
selection of productions for which to write, and by sticking to his
established collaborations more often than not (
Along Came a
Spider, for instance, reunited him with Tamahori after their work
together for
The Edge), he ultimately became attached to trashy
pictures. Even the composer lamented in his final years that he had
become mired in terrible assignments. Ultimately, if Goldsmith wanted to
win another Oscar, then writing derivative music for inevitable failures
like
Along Came a Spider was never the way to do it. While there
remained a minority audience for mundane Goldsmith scores like
Hollow
Man and
Along Came a Spider, it had become increasingly clear
that the composer's days of even providing at least a mediocre motif or
theme at the conclusion of his scores had passed. What most collectors
heard was a legendary composer on autopilot. It came as no surprise,
therefore, that there is absolutely nothing in
Along Came a
Spider that Goldsmith fans had not heard five or six times before in
previous years. Of Goldsmith's minimalistic suspense scores, in fact,
this one is by far the most boring. It served as evidence that he wasn't
even making a concerted effort in his 2000 and 2001 scores (including
the subsequent
The Last Castle) to create a new sound, a new
structural reinvention, or any new approach to his balance between the
synthetic and the orchestral. Even with Mark McKenzie brought in to
orchestrate
Along Came a Spider (replacing Alexander Courage),
listeners hear the same old, tired electronics and orchestral elements.
Goldsmith's music spends a significant amount of its time establishing
the setting and atmosphere of the story, leading to lengthy sequences of
single cello plucks and other bumps and groans that require
amplification just to hear.
In "Night Talk," Goldsmith's trademark metallic
electronics drone away for three minutes, barely interrupted by
occasional dissonant sways of the strings. The electronic sound effect
of a vibrating metal wire heard in this cue is obviously meant to give
an aural representation of a spider, but it is not pronounced enough to
be even remotely exciting. The action sequences are stereotypically
handled with standard hits of the orchestra, usually followed by the
kind of drab brass motifs that punctuate the later
Star Trek
scores. The chasing or searching scenes offer tiresome drum pad
explosions from countless other Goldsmith scores. In "The Ransom,"
Goldsmith finally develops the percussion and brass into extended motifs
that promise to reveal a cohesive theme for the score, but this is one
of the few projects late in his career for which his themes are so
anonymous in structure and buried in the soundscape that they make no
impression whatsoever. The one interesting aspect of these louder
moments is the performance of the piano in the latter half of the score,
hinting at the staggered rhythms of
Capricorn One and
Contract
on Cherry Street. Otherwise, there is really nothing original or
interesting about the score for
Along Came a Spider. The final
track doesn't resolve with any satisfaction, leaving the listener with
35 minutes of bland and uninspiring underscore. To the credit of the
engineers, the mixing of Goldsmith's late scores remains consistent,
leading since 1998 to a phenomenal presence of the orchestra and crisp
resonance in each of its sections. Better sound quality doesn't lead to
originality, though, and longtime Goldsmith collectors had every reason
to be secretly nervous that the composer was losing his touch in the
precious few assignments he had remaining before his death in 2004. Only
the somewhat engaging "The Ransom" pulls this score above the lowest
rating.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
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Bias Check: |
For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.29
(in 113 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.31
(in 143,750 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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