Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #927
Written 4/13/00, Revised 7/5/13
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Buy it... if you would be satisfied with lesser forms of the brutal
action in First Blood, the swelling mannerisms of
Poltergeist, and the thematic structures of Under Fire in
a slightly ethnic package.
Avoid it... if you're simply curious about the ability of The
Challenge to provide the same kind of highlights as the scores
listed above, even if this score does offer these offshoots in
surprisingly dynamic sound quality.
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| Goldsmith |
The Challenge: (Jerry Goldsmith) Director John
Frankenheimer sought to clash the brazen action of American cinema with
the ancient traditions of Japan in The Challenge, and audiences
wanted nothing to do with it. The obscure 1982 film tells of a
contemporary, initially unwilling American boxer (Scott Glenn in the
middle of his career ascent) who is trained in the ways of the ninja,
both mentally and physically, to help one Japanese brother in his
decades-old battle with his more modern, gun-wielding counterpart to
secure two sacred swords. The film's focus is towards the concepts of
honor and tradition rather than straight forward action, though
Frankenheimer inserts enough of a basic revenge equation and frenetic
action scenes to serve American audiences. A dash of nudity,
hallucinations, and outrageous, head-splitting violence is also
featured, none of which prevented the production from fading quickly to
a level of obscurity that didn't allow it a home video release for over
thirty years. Composer Jerry Goldsmith had rarely ventured into the
realm of Japanese-influenced music, but The Challenge came at
time of great transition and fantastic output, by almost unanimous
accounts, in his career. Twenty years after the fact, the budding
Prometheus label revived Goldsmith scores from this era over the course
of 1999 and 2000, including Breakout and Contract on Cherry
Street. These scores all feature carry-over traits of Goldsmith's
Silver Age writing while also significantly foreshadowing his superior
work of the 1980's. The non-synthetic habits of the composer in that
decade served him well with The Challenge, though despite the
marginally alienating ethnic elements of the work, collectors of
Goldsmith's scores will find it to be among the more readily consistent
and accessible of his scores from the era. In the process of tackling
this kind of values-based film of Japanese influence, Goldsmith was
called upon to do something new for The Challenge: compose a
score of Japanese character without charging that ethnic influence from
a hostile or intentionally foreign direction. Such had been the case
with his only previous score of primarily Japanese instrumentation,
Tora!, Tora!, Tora!, for which a more divergent sound was
appropriate. The composer employed the shakuhachi flute, zither-like
koto, and mixing bowls to create the proper ethnic environment, but the
traditional orchestra that almost always accompanies these elements is
what carries the majority of the load in the soundscape. Any initial
impression that the score will devote itself to the ethnic sounds will
be dashed by the fact that The Challenge quickly reveals itself
to be a somewhat predictable combination of First Blood,
Poltergeist, and Under Fire.
While the koto and shakuhachi contributions to the
"Main Title" cue in
The Challenge are functional at acknowledging
the Japanese setting as necessary, Goldsmith's intent was to address the
underlying values of the film's story rather than individual characters.
That approach allowed him to extend his usual thematic intensity and
rhythmic trademarks of the era to some roaring action sequences on par,
in some cases, with
First Blood. The employment of brass and
percussion over staggered rhythms not only reminds of
First
Blood, but also
Capricorn One, the performances as brutal as
they are dynamic. The listless and floating set of shakuhachi flute
performances (with a low and shifting wash of strings in several cues)
is accompanied by evocative, tonal swells and woodwind interludes that
are familiar to
Poltergeist when the swords are discussed. The
score's only major theme contains progressions that mirror the
militaristic march from
Under Fire, but in a completely different
context. These softer ideas convey an understandably restrained and
controlled attitude, only faintly alluding to the fantasy element of the
ninja concept. Once, in "Stay with Me," does Goldsmith develop the theme
into one of romance with a heavy dose of string and woodwind beauty to
give it a melodramatic interpretation. The only secondary theme is one
pretty but insignificant warmth in "Let's Talk." Unreleased for a long
time, there was much hype surrounding the initial 2000 album for
The
Challenge by Prometheus, and the product didn't really live up to
the hype generated at the time of its release, especially compared to
expectations driven by Goldsmith's other 1982 works. There is action
material surely worth investigating, along with the one truly romantic
variant on the title theme, but there are so many familiar aspects of
this score's remaining parts that it causes you to seek out the superior
alternatives to each sequence. The sound quality of the score, despite
the horrendous characteristics of the many informal bootlegs that
existed for it during the 1990's, has always been quite good, with
transfers for the official albums made from sources that were found
years later in excellent condition. In 2013, the La-La Land Records
label resurrected
The Challenge again and added three bonus
alternate takes amounting to 16 minutes of music, and on this product,
which was initially delayed by several weeks due to manufacturing
errors, the mix elevates the sound quality of the score even further,
making it one of the best-sounding entries in the composer's career
during that fruitful time. The slurring trombones and pounding
percussion on this product don't sound significantly different from
their equivalents in
The Shadow twelve years later. Overall, this
is the kind of score that will fascinate any long-time Goldsmith
collector, even if the ethnic instrumentation is conservatively employed
and the action material is better realized elsewhere.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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Bias Check:
For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.23
(in 140 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.25
(in 154,785 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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