Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #1,831
Written 12/28/09
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Buy it... only if you become entranced by serviceable and
mechanical military thriller scores of a variety that Klaus Badelt and
other Media Ventures graduates seem to have no problem churning out.
Avoid it... if you want any of your expectations to be surpassed by
this bland, uneventful exercise in electronic textures and token ethnic
accents.
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| Badelt |
Basic: (Klaus Badelt) Director John McTiernan had
many chances in the late 1990's and early 2000's to resurrect the
stunning success with which he burst onto the scene in the late 1980's.
After spoiling audiences with Predator, Die Hard, and
The Hunt for Red October, McTiernan killed his career with
Last Action Hero, The 13th Warrior, and Rollerball.
The final nail in the coffin proved to be Basic in 2003, a
hopeless attempt to execute the ultimate in clever audience deception. A
horrendous script stole significant inspiration from Courage Under
Fire, investigating a military event in flashbacks from the
perspective of incongruent participants. In this case, a group of
Rangers training in Panama disappears, and somewhere in between the drug
trade and corrupt officers, the unsavory truth lies. The most unsavory
truth about Basic was the fact that it failed to return its
estimated $50 million budget, likely the final reason McTiernan didn't
debut another film during the remainder of the decade. Scathing reviews
quickly pointed to the abysmal plot, one that tried so hard to
manipulate the audience that it became either incredibly annoying or
frustrating. The director had worked with several major composers over
the course of his career, from Alan Silvestri and Jerry Goldsmith to
Michael Kamen and Bill Conti. One aspect of these collaborations was
that none of these composers proved to be McTiernan's go-to guy; by the
final years, Graeme Revell, Eric Serra, and Klaus Badelt rounded out the
group with often odd and disjointed efforts. Badelt was coming into his
own in 2002 and 2003, finally making an earnest departure from the
collaborations with Hans Zimmer that guided his career since arriving in
Los Angeles from Germany five years earlier. During the early 2000's,
before Badelt largely slipped out of mainstream view, the composer was
involved with a series of mysteries and thrillers that in a few cases
also involved militaristic themes. Unfortunately, many of these efforts
were procedural and failed to really show the kind of potential that
Badelt surprised listeners with in 2006 with The Promise.
Clearly, Basic belongs in this substandard group, and if you
found the composer's music for The Recruit to be uninspiring,
then Basic won't impress much either.
You could not imagine a score more predictable than
Basic. It even utilizes Ramin Djawadi as an additional composer
and arranger, a sign that you've graduated from Zimmer's school and
achieved a level of status worthy of your own ghostwriters. The ensemble
is common to Media Venture leftovers, an array of electronic
rhythm-setters and sampled sounds merged with a handful of exotic
woodwinds and other accents meant to address the Panama setting. It's
difficult to determine if the orchestral sounds in
Basic are real
or sampled; they've usually been processed to such an extent that you
can't tell the difference anyway. As such, they generally sound like
faux strings and faux brass in their typical staccato format, albeit at
a much slower and less forceful rate than established by Zimmer and Mark
Mancina in the golden years of these techniques. On the subject of those
two composers, it should be mentioned that the use of exotic flutes,
simple melody, and synthetic bass enhancements in
Basic never
comes close to achieving the same intoxicating appeal as
Beyond
Rangoon or
Return to Paradise. Part of that difference is due
to the low key approach taken by Badelt to
Basic. This is a score
that simmers for its entire length, building up to a series of small
crescendos in short cues (to match the many twists in the story). Almost
every one contains the score's only major theme, a series of ominous
pairs that usually trails off after the first two. So frequent is
Badelt's referencing of this theme that the score quickly becomes
monotonous. The instrumental shades never really mature beyond the
extremely restrained crescendos and a feeling of resolution in the final
cues. There is no beginning, middle, or end to this work, nor is there
any true panic or urgency in its rhythms. Badelt seems to have a way of
stating all the right things with his music without capturing the
intangible emotional appeals of the story, and
Basic is no
different. This music is as stale as it could be, sufficient in a basic
sense but never excelling beyond minimum atmospheric requirements. It
ranks a "0" on the style scale. That, combined with the film's overall
failure, precluded the possibility of a commercial album release for
Basic, though within a year of its debut, undaunted Media
Ventures fans got a hold of a decent copy of the score and pressed a
54-minute bootleg. Sound quality on this leak is decent, but lacking
dynamic range, and unless you're a Badelt enthusiast, steer clear of
this unnecessary bootleg.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
Bias Check:
For Klaus Badelt reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3
(in 11 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.11
(in 104,619 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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