: (Jerry Goldsmith) While it's
incredibly politically incorrect to say so, there was something
entertaining about Hollywood stereotypes of radical Islamic terrorists
in early 1990's cinema. The widely advertised 1996 summer blockbuster
hopeful
touted its portrayal of a stealth
aircraft in action, assisting a team of commandos board a hijacked plane
full of, you guessed it, crazed Arabs inspired, in part, by equivalents
in
. In this case, there's not only a load of people to
save on the plane, but there's also a wicked dirty bomb in its cargo
hold that presents a significant danger once the aircraft crosses over
America, proving once again the ills of pre-September 11th airport
screening. At least the film did feature a cast that made it one of the
more enjoyable late-night finds on television; while Kurt Russell and
Halle Berry save the day, the always amusing Navy Seal-inspired Steven
Seagal makes a rare exit with a glorious death relatively early in the
film, an intriguing plus that was met with widespread critical applause
for playing with audience expectations. With such a familiar formula at
work otherwise, composer Jerry Goldsmith was set to reinforce his return
to the mainstream action genre in the middle of the 1990's, though he
fared better with this general subject matter when
flew into theatres the following year. After spending much of the early
1990's trudging through the less popular fields of children's films and
light comedies, Goldsmith reinvigorated his fanbase with several full
scale action efforts, the results of which were very mixed, varying from
highly memorable to merely mediocre. One of the more surprisingly
mediocre ventures was
, typical of numerous
projects for which Goldsmith's usual standard of action writing managed
to elevate the film from total failure but not yield truly a truly
attractive listening experience on its own. Unfortunately, the
production matched the disappointment experienced by
at the same time, failing to add any significant new
substance to Goldsmith's career.
The dominant, militaristic side of
Executive Decision is the kind of
good-guy/bad-guy action style that the composer likely heard in his own
sleep, with the expected orchestral and synthesized ensemble tones,
including very tired drum pads, ready to pump out familiar Goldsmith
techniques at every turn. Luckily, the feeling of constantly rehashed
material was restricted to this film rather than overflowing into
Air
Force One, leaving
Executive Decision as a faint shadow of
the other score. Strangely, Goldsmith would not do his best work for
director Stuart Baird, with whom the composer would also collaborate on
U.S. Marshals and
Star Trek: Nemesis. If there is one
consistent aspect to Goldsmith's work for Baird's films, it's the lack
of great steps in creativity. Almost in opposite fashion to his work on
Joe Dante's more quirky projects, the comparatively straight-laced
action of Baird's endeavors, including
Executive Decision, seems
to leave Goldsmith without much inspiration. Despite some tepid attempts
to address worldly tones for the villains of the story, the themes and
orchestration in
Executive Decision are extremely familiar, with
the ensemble's performances often dull and lacking vibrant character.
There is little enthusiasm to be heard out of these performers,
Goldsmith's brass fanfares here missing the bounce and dynamic energy
that they exhibit in his similar scores, especially those that came in
the next three subsequent years. The structures are also weak, reminding
of
Twilight's Last Gleaming in both their percussive suspense
rhythms and occasional militaristic outbursts. The main fanfare is
structurally very similar to that of
First Knight, and trumpets
seem content to perform a very faintly echoing sub-motif for the
American military that once again raises memories of
Patton. For
the many action sequences, Goldsmith's rhythmic material lets rip with a
light snare and tingling electronics, but the flat ambience and
average-at-best primary theme severely restrict the score's ability to
interest you beyond the vast collection of other Goldsmith works. Even
the processed motif for the Arab terrorists is conceived in a half-assed
manner, very underdeveloped and stereotypical in its use of Middle
Eastern progressions over oud, sitar, and other token instruments.
For collectors of all of Goldsmith's action material,
portions of the
Executive Decision score will remain a solid
experience apart from the film. There are some small motific elements of
the work that are intellectually engaging, such as the dirty bomb's own
synthetic motif, as well as the theme for the terrorist leader in "The
Abduction" that heavily foreshadows the villain's identity in
Star
Trek: Nemesis. The adaptations of the rising military motif, ranging
from the standard echoing trumpets early to suspenseful woodwinds later,
are better suited for the film than its major heroic theme. The middle,
suspense portions of the score often rumble through ambient rhythmic
minimalism that greatly hinders the listening experience. Discontent
long followed
Executive Decision because of its insanely short
1996 soundtrack album, only the opening three and closing three tracks
on that Varèse Sarabande album providing ten to fifteen minutes
of reasonable but underdeveloped music with familiar origins. Outside of
context, the score suffered more than most other Goldsmith projects
because the of short cue lengths that required merging into longer
presentations. Although Goldsmith recorded over 80 minutes of music for
the film, the 1996 commercial album woefully presented less than 30 of
those minutes due to disadvantageous union re-use fees at the time, with
mostly the lengthier recordings chosen for inclusion on that product.
Despite the licensing reasons that justified this length of the
presentation at the time, Goldsmith fans continued to use
Executive
Decision as a point of complaint for many years. Unfortunately, some
of the more interestingly nuanced music from the film existed in those
short cues that were not provided, sending fans in search of widely
distributed bootlegs of the score. The label eventually made the score
one of its Club entries in 2016, offering more than 74 minutes of
material in film order, including all three recorded variants of "The
Abduction." This fuller album is long overdue, but even it will require
Goldsmith's enthusiasts to rearrange and trim the presentation down to a
more engaging 20 to 25 minutes of all available highlights. The
recording remains more flat in ambience than the composer's other
entries from the time, including the vastly superior
The Ghost and
the Darkness. By comparison,
Executive Decision is a decent
but occasionally boring auto-pilot work that should be approached
cautiously on album unless you are a fanatic Goldsmith action
collector.
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- Music as Written for the Film: **
- Music as Heard on the 1996 Album: **
- Music as Heard on the 2016 Album: ***
- Overall: **
| Bias Check: |
For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.26
(in 125 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.29
(in 153,510 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
