Deterrence, on the other hand, is a smaller budget action/drama that portrays the president attempting to avert nuclear war while stranded at a remote Colorado diner. The musical approach to each is completely different, with a surprising result. Scored with a delicate and soft touch, The Contender is a distant cousin of Marc Shaiman's The American President, with light and consistently upbeat performances of a simple, but elegant and patriotic theme. The continuous repetition of this theme, along with the noble respect with which Groupé allows the musicians to stretch every moment, is predictable but functional. For a film charged with dark politics, only the subtle, but highly effective piano solos that open and close the film represent an alienating or downright serious attitude. The title theme, restrained in nearly every appearance, only takes flight in "The Speech," when it begins to adopt the stature and progressions of Richard Marvin's U-571. As patriotic scores go, The Contender was well conceived yet underdeveloped in its final performance, identical to the less interesting parts of The American President. With a considerably smaller scope, Deterrence is a completely different breed of score. While it does not attempt to mask the fact that it is a one man, synthesized effort, Deterrence features a much more broad range of stylistic motifs throughout its contents. Despite the lack of an orchestral presence, it is a more dynamic and interesting listening experience than The Contender.

The electronics in Deterrence can be categorized as somewhere in between the styles of Don Davis and Mark Snow, making use of militaristic percussion (like Davis) and extra synthesized elements such as ominous vocals (like Snow) for its most inspiring moments. Perhaps the performances that best tie the two scores together are their brief, but effective piano solos, but the highlight of their combined ranks is the faux-choral, harmonic requiem in "Deterrence." The heavy reliance on synthetic percussion in Deterrence is tiring in its latter half, but unlike The Contender, the music at least attempts to really reach out and engage the listener. Just because The Contender is the better known film of the two and features the orchestra doesn't automatically make it the more memorable score of the two. The album situation for The Contender and Deterrence is a bit muddy because Groupé had offered several of his synthesized scores in the form of promotional CDs that could be purchased directly from him online in 2000. Deterrence had already been released in this form by itself, before Citadel rearranged its cues and attached them to the end of its limited commercial release for The Contender. It should be noted that the Citadel product cleaned up much of the sound distortion that existed on former promotional versions, though there is still some static interference in the brass during elevated gain levels in "I Stand For" and "End Title: The Chapel of Democracy" (that was likely a mistake during mastering). Like any Citadel album, this one was always difficult to find in stores, and functioned much like any limited album you'd normally seek at soundtrack specialty outlets online. Still, the product offered a substantial amount of music for a first listen of Groupé's work by film music fandom and deserves a spin.  ***   @Amazon.com: CD or Download