: (Hans Zimmer/John Powell/Jeff Rona)
Did film studios really take audiences for such fools that those viewers
wouldn't be able to figure out that
? This time, instead of a bus rigged to explode if it slows
below 50 miles per hour, you have a nasty biological weapon that will
explode and defoliate plants, melt human flesh, etc, if it is warmed
above 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Worse yet, the bomb's name is Elvis and the
vehicle this time is an ice cream truck. The plot is one of those
buddy/adversity varieties, putting Cuba Gooding Jr. and Skeet Ulrich in
the position of being forced to carry the bomb to a target chosen for
reasons of revenge by a government-brainwashed villain who has gotten
free from the clutches of the law. One of the famously dumb quotes from
the film was "I'd like to kick your ass like last year's underwear."
Sound stupid? Indeed it is, and the film plummeted to the depths of
obscurity within a week or two after its theatrical release, destined to
eventually be one of those after-midnight flicks you see on cable
channels, broken into segments between advertisements for sultry
900-number phone sex and Caribbean psychics who would eventually be
indicted for fraud. Another problem existed with the mix of the film's
sound effects and music; while they were balanced in a decent,
stereophonic fashion in the film, the bass of the sound effects booms in
sub-25Hz ranges, often bordering on the ability to blow out speakers if
you attempt to raise the volume to enjoy the music. As an assignment,
was just as curious for composer Hans Zimmer as it
had been for Cuba Gooding Jr., who had just come off of an Academy Award
win. Zimmer had been nominated for three Academy Awards in the 18 months
prior to
. Add to that period a strong action score for
And then, in 1999,
Chill Factor was Zimmer's
sole assignment, and it would take
Gladiator the following year
for fans to forget the highly unfortunate previous year that the
composer had experienced. As per usual, Zimmer delegated some of the
scoring duties for
Chill Factor to two of his regular
collaborators, John Powell and Jeff Rona (perhaps he actually viewed a
late cut of the film and realized how laughable its premise and
presentation really were). As a piece of music,
Chill Factor
isn't much more intelligent than the film it accompanies. If you've ever
heard one of those dozens of Media Ventures sampler CDs, usually divided
up by genre of music, then you've likely heard material far better and
presented with stronger consistency than the compilation of unrelated
ideas for
Chill Factor. This score really is nothing more than a
collection of 25 or so Media Ventures sampler cues, and despite the
basic development of two themes for the film (one for the two heroes and
the other for the nutcase who created the bomb), there is a distinct
feeling that all of this material had been heard before. Most of the
action underscore is a variation of rambling keyboards and choppy string
samples that fans of the composer had grown accustomed to. The action
music is not even close to being as finely tuned as in, for instance,
The Peacemaker, nor do the actions cues last for lengthy enough
periods of time to establish an exciting mood for the music (a probable
result of the film's pace and rapid scene changes). The music even fails
to pump up the listener in its chaos, as
The Rock did for some
listeners. The theme for the two heroes is hinted at in some of the
action material, but comes to life in the one outstanding cue in all of
Chill Factor. The soft, acoustic guitar performance of this theme
(perhaps a John Powell contribution?) occupies one of the score's
lengthier cues, and despite its painfully obvious rip-off of the
Toys theme of the same emotional direction, it is one of those
great "easy-listening" Media Ventures moments.
The other evident theme is the one for the villain of
the picture, and this series of rhythms and motifs is somewhat amusing
in its almost
Spy Kids-like reliance on techno-gadget sounds. It
is a more forceful representation of the hard percussion and guitars you
would expect, but it has a strangely distorted series of keyboarded
measures and female vocals (real or programmed, it's hard to tell).
These effects seem to represent the wailing of sirens or air horns as
they pass on the road, which may be a nice, somewhat unique touch, but
they're extremely difficult to tolerate on their own. Adding insult to
injury, this wailing effect, as well as the progressions of the
villain's theme, are seemingly pulled from Mark Mancina's score for
Speed. Overall, the music for
Chill Factor is further
hindered by its 30-second cue construction. The film was enough of a
failure to obstruct the possibility of a commercial song or score album.
But, as usual, Media Ventures let the complete score filter out for fans
in bootleg form (did these guys even care anymore about security on
their works?), and the presentation is nearly impossible to enjoy
(outside of that one soft guitar theme that remains intact) because of
its succession of ultra-short cues. It also exposes several repeat uses
of the same or nearly identical music for multiple scenes. The original
42-minute bootleg with 28 untitled tracks is deceptive, because many of
the cues are simply reprises of other tracks on the album, and others
are slight remixes that don't vary enough to consider them worthy of
repeat listens. Subsequent bootlegs condensed the music down to two
cues: the end credits as heard on the DVD and a suite formed out of the
26 remaining, short cues (the end credits had been repeated for some
reason on the previous bootleg). The shorter, two-track bootleg is only
22 minutes in length, but it's a far better listening experience on
album. Whoever combined the short cues into the 17:30 minute suite did a
good enough job to make the album listenable on a basic level. There is,
however, some slight upper range distortion on many of the bootlegs'
presentation of the end credits, probably due to excessive gain levels
somewhere along the transfer line. The only reason Zimmer fans, or
anyone else for that matter, should invest in these bootlegs is for the
3-minute
Toys-like guitar theme. Otherwise, it's nothing more
than a bland Media Ventures sampler.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For Hans Zimmer reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.84
(in 121 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 2.96
(in 298,225 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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