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Beltrami |
Live Free or Die Hard: (Marco Beltrami) While the
fourth installment of the
Die Hard franchise has surprisingly
garnered neutral to positive critical reviews across the board, you
still have to wonder if the concept hasn't lost sight of the reasons for
its original success. Three things made John McClane's world great: his
purely realistic, non-superhero abilities, the confined areas in which
his terrorist foes enact their plans, and, of course, the outstanding
villains themselves. After
Die Hard with a Vengeance dropped the
idea of the confined battlefield, and with a dozen years for writers to
work on the perfect script with which to reintroduce McClane,
Live
Free or Die Hard somehow manages to lose all three of those
original, endearing, and critical
Die Hard qualities. McClane now
chases a cyber terrorist around the East Coast, dragging along his
daughter and actor Justin Long, whose role as the Mac in Apple's current
commercials dooms his appearance from the start. A weak villain played
by Timothy Olyphant is out-staged by his ninja-like female wench, which
alone indicates how far this franchise has fallen. Director Len Wiseman
transfers much of his crew from his last
Underworld film over to
Live Free or Die Hard, including composer Marco Beltrami. While
Beltrami has scored several major summer blockbusters during the 2000's,
including popular sequels, none have particularly gained him much
attention from the mainstream. His music for these films is serviceable
and occasionally quite impressive in single cues, but at the end of the
day, Beltrami has a knack for writing anonymous action music that
doesn't play well enough apart from the film to warrant album
purchases.
With
Live Free or Die Hard he tackles the same
franchise predicament that he faced in
Terminator 3. In this
case, the franchise composer, Michael Kamen, died several years ago; his
music has been held in very high regards by some collectors, though for
the mainstream, it's easy to say that the films have outshined their
scores. Only in the past few years did the original
Die Hard
score achieve a legal, limited release on CD. One of Beltrami's failings
with
Terminator 3 was his lack of creative incorporation of the
famous theme for the franchise into his underscore. Not only does he
rectify this situation in
Live Free or Die Hard, but he has, in
many respects, written a prototypical Kamen score with several aspects
of Kamen's
Die Hard music reprised for good measure. Kamen never
wrote a really memorable theme for the franchise, but his six-note title
theme is still surprisingly recognizable even two decades after its
introduction. Beltrami uses this theme liberally, in several different
contexts throughout the score. He also takes a few of Kamen's trademark
motifs and instrumentation and incorporates them into a score that has
Kamen's style written all over it. That instrumentation includes a
plethora of low brass and varied drums, with the occasional fluttering
woodwind in the treble. Orchestra hits, punctuated by the resounding
percussion section, are a particular return to Kamen's original score.
The main Kamen theme was never really great at action statements, but it
was very effective in conveying human anguish and melodrama; Beltrami
plays it dramatically right at the start in "Out of Bullets," with that
tinge of drama in "It's a Fire Sale" and "Landing," and as referential
counterpoint for tense situations like the three cues from "Break a
Neck" to "The F-35."
Beltrami doesn't forget the famous brass blasts that
punctuated Hans Gruber's fall in
Die Hard. He hints at them at
the end of "Cold Cuts" and provides a full-fledged reprisal of the motif
at the climax of "The F-35." Despite this pseudo-tribute to Kamen (or
perhaps just a very good job of adaptation), there are some elements of
the score that fall stylistically in Beltrami's corner. His use of
electronics and low range strings in relentlessly chopping string
ostinatos is reminiscent of his other recent action scores. Their bold
posture in the "Live Free or Die Hard" conclusion to the album are
almost to levels as striking as Craig Armstrong's music. The employment
of percussion is, in parts, similar in ambitious tone variations as
David Arnold's James Bond scores, and the more propulsive sections of
Live Free or Die Hard will remind some listeners of
Casino
Royale. In a handful of the score's primary and lengthy action cues,
a touch of Jerry Goldsmith will be noticed in the brass usage. The most
interesting aspect of Beltrami's score, as a whole, is how overbearing
the action can seem by the end of the album. There are some brief pauses
from the chasing and explosions in
Live Free or Die Hard, but
you'd hardly notice them in the few subdued moments of the score. These
less exciting cues, such as "Dead Hackers" and "Aftermath," don't really
provide this score with its own sense of identity. Beltrami seems more
content using fragments of Kamen's previous ideas, and as a result, this
score is an extension of that sound rather than a noteworthy standalone
entry. Given the disappointment with the adaptation work in
Terminator 3, this is a definite step in the right direction. But
in the end, the
Live Free or Die Hard score, like the movie,
simply goes through familiar moves that may or may not be enough to
sustain your interest.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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Bias Check: |
For Marco Beltrami reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.75
(in 28 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 2.8
(in 19,011 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes a list of performers, but no extra information about the score
or film.