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| Goldsmith |
Criminal Law: (Jerry Goldsmith) While the 1988 film
was absolutely torn apart by critics and audiences alike,
Criminal
Law was an introduction of two eventually well-known people to the
mainstream of American cinema. Young British actor Gary Oldman debuted
in Hollywood's spotlight with this unfortunate film, as did director
Martin Campbell, for whom the project would be his first leap from the
obscurity of television production to a career in cinema that would
yield projects like
GoldenEye and
The Mask of Zorro (and
its sequel) down the road. With a plot that attempts to jolt audiences
with false scares from start to finish,
Criminal Law throws
Oldman's cocky character, an attorney, into a series of legal fires
created by Kevin Bacon's maniacal counterpart. The attorney manages to
get the criminal acquitted on one brutal rape and murder charge before
his client then turns around and begins framing (and generally
harassing) him for subsequent murders. Painfully hokey dialogue and an
unnecessary homoerotic subtext plague the graphic film, and by the time
the movie was done jerking around the audience on its ride of dubious
logic,
Criminal Law qualified as a genuine, grade-A stinker.
Campbell would, a decade after this project, rely upon James Horner as a
regular collaborator for his original scores, but
Criminal Law
came at a time when the director rotated between composers frequently
and, for this project, he teamed up for the only time with Jerry
Goldsmith. In the 1980's, Goldsmith was at the height of a period
defined by his experimentation with electronics, often with grand
results when combining them with his usual orchestral ensemble and
rhythmic sensibilities. Even in scores dominated by his array of
synthetics, either a fully orchestral layer or notable collection of
soloists accompanied those electronic textures. There were only a few
scores for which Goldsmith turned exclusively to his synthesizers, and
their succession in the middle to late 1980's included
Runaway,
Alien Nation (a rejected work) and
Criminal Law. Not
surprisingly, these were the few scores performed by Goldsmith himself
as well, and with their sparse constructs came more frustration from
listeners than interest and engagement.
To appreciate a score like
Criminal Law out of
context, especially if you're a die-hard enthusiast of Goldsmith's
typically resounding combination of orchestra and electronics, you have
to accept the work at face value. Even as prevalent as the electronics
are in a concurrent score like
Extreme Prejudice, there is little
that will prepare you for the stark landscape of
Criminal Law.
Synthesizers back in the 1980's had a distinctly fake sound to their
imitations of real instruments, and scores like that utilized such
samples showed their age very quickly. Goldsmith didn't often employ
this kind of sampling, but when he did, the tones were harsh,
mechanical, and dissonant, leaving practically nothing for the listener
to latch onto and remember later. From start to finish,
Criminal
Law is an exercise in ambient texture devoid of thematic or rhythmic
development beyond brief ideas introduced in nearly every cue.
Stylistically, the music is probably appropriate for the age and
attitude of the film itself, sweeping aside any sense of harmony or
genuine sensibility in the same way the film disregards logic and
reality. It broods with unsatisfying monotony similar to James Horner's
The Name of the Rose from the same era, even developing a token
thematic inclusion at the end. For Goldsmith, the resolution is a
synthetic trumpet and piano theme of slightly contemporary tones vaguely
similar, as usual for the period, to
The Russia House. Whether
the composer's reason for producing an all-electronic score for
Criminal Law was budgetary or purposefully for the texture, one
thing is for certain: the learned Goldsmith collector will be able to
translate the rhythms and motifs to their orchestral counterparts if
they listen closely enough. This may be difficult, given the propensity
this score has towards boring the listener, but there are certain
sections in
Criminal Law that could easily make for a very strong
result if only performed by orchestral instrumentation. The choice of
the samples utilized is also somewhat curious, though, because Goldsmith
refrains from using his more popular synthetic sounds (pan pipes,
bouncing basketball, wet street swishes, etc) in favor of very dull and
unmemorable keyboarding and generic background tones. Overall,
Criminal Law is definitely one of the weakest Goldsmith efforts
of the digital era, combining a lack of diverse instrumentation with a
stylistic intent to only add to the film's dissolution through dark
textures.
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| Bias Check: |
For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.26
(in 124 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.29
(in 153,454 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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