: (Jerry Goldsmith) The name of
director and producer Walter Hill is synonymous with gritty action of
the 1980's, a resurrection of the stylistic genre created by Sam
Peckinpah decades earlier and revised for the era of honor exemplified
by
and a rash of law enforcement and Western films along
similar lines at the time. Like many of the films in this genre, 1987's
is largely forgotten today, its stars faded and
its ilk largely neglected. Its premise involves a good versus evil
battle of torn love and drug trade in a small Texas town on the Mexican
border, with the drug lord and Texas Ranger standing firm on their
convictions until the obligatory duel of Peckinpah proportions at the
end of the film. Relying on the building of suspense through brooding
weight and occasional massive bloodshed,
added
a twist of modern military commandos to the traditional Western setting,
updating the genre for
-friendly audiences. Composer Jerry
Goldsmith was, of course, no stranger to this genre, and it was by the
fate of mistaken timing that he landed on the project of
. Hill's usual collaborator was Ry Cooder, who passed on
the project due to scheduling conflicts that turned out to resolve
themselves. By then, however, Goldsmith was at work on the film and
Cooder only provided a handful of source cues as a contribution. While
Goldsmith's exemplary efforts of the 1980's, the most inventive decade
of his career and arguably the best, often saved B-rate films from the
pits of despair, even an above-average result for
failed to salvage the film for mainstream American
audiences. Hill was never a fan of large orchestral scores, a sound he
believe to be a relic of 1950's vistas, and was likely swayed to hire
Goldsmith in part because of the composer's versatility with
synthesizers at the time. Coming off of
just months
before, Goldsmith had proven that his synthesizers could be combined
with an orchestral ensemble to create a magnificent result in situations
where the synthetics were certainly not an inherently logical choice of
instrumentation.
Despite the brilliance Goldsmith displayed with such cases
as
Hoosiers and
Under Fire in synth-defying genres, the
composer would have a difficult time reprising that quality for
Extreme Prejudice. The elements are all exactly the same from
those two previous scores; in fact, if you take the orchestral ensemble
and the array of electronic samples that Goldsmith would use for
Extreme Prejudice, you'd hear an overwhelming influence from
Hoosiers and
Under Fire, with several hints of
experimentation that would yield great results a few years later in
Total Recall (and even
Star Trek: Insurrection much later)
as well. You can easily hear the wheels turning in Goldsmith's head when
working on
Extreme Prejudice, because the maturity of his
synthetic/orchestral marriage was fine-tuned by that point and
consistent as ever. The only problem with the equation this time around,
however, was Hill's own extreme prejudice against the traditional sound
of the orchestra. Between Hill and the studio, much of Goldsmith's most
interesting and heart-pounding music for
Extreme Prejudice would
never be heard in the film, as the composer's original trailer music for
the project (essentially previews of his relevant themes for the score)
was replaced, a funeral cue was cut along with the entire scene, and the
lengthy bank robbery cue in the middle of the film was toned back
considerably by Hill's request. Goldsmith was always amenable to
directors' requests, and he faithfully substituted several of the
orchestral elements with a harsher electronic ambience. But you can hear
two different scores for
Extreme Prejudice in action on the album
releases: Goldsmith's and Hill's. And while you have to admire Hill for
sticking to his guns in protecting the sound of his films, a learned
Goldsmith collector will hear some outstanding material in the rejected
portions that many would wish that the composer had expanded upon for
Extreme Prejudice. The final result for Hill would be an often
edgy score deep in synthetic layers, with all of Goldsmith's
recognizable electronic samples zipping, tearing, swooshing, and ticking
in every cue. Ironically, it's the collection of bouncing basketball
sounds, drum pad-like effects taken directly from the courts of
Hoosiers, that propel the action in
Extreme
Prejudice.
A substantial amount of interesting but not necessarily
exciting atmosphere exists in
Extreme Prejudice. The score is
certainly rich with themes, and Goldsmith remains loyal to his motifs
for all three lead characters, the soldiers, and a sort of
Latin-influenced primary theme that eventually steals the show. But
these themes are often muted by the limited capabilities of a
synthesizer array pushed to a maximum volume by Hill's narrow vision of
Western tension. Only two of the themes that Goldsmith created for
Extreme Prejudice are readily memorable, and it is no coincidence
that they are the ones featured with prominent orchestral performances
over those synthesizers. When the composer allowed himself to explore
this hybrid avenue, the score takes on traits very similar to
Under
Fire, which offered a heartbreaking combination of electronics and
orchestra for its major thematic statements. The first outstanding
moment in
Extreme Prejudice is the rejected "The Plan" cue, a
lengthy concert-style action romp that concludes with four minutes of
ballsy brass performances of the "soldier theme" that rival Goldsmith's
best action music of the era. Any Goldsmith collector will hear the
latter half of this cue and immediately scratch his or her head in the
act of questioning the sanity of Hill's demands. Where the composer did
succeed in inserting his grand orchestral/synthesizer balance with
lasting results is in the very final moments of the score. In the latter
portions of the film, he takes a motif barely stated in the first half
and expands upon it until it is, by the end credits, the only identity
you'll remember from the soundtrack. Dubbed the "Mexican theme," this
idea debuts in full during "No Friendlies" and takes on a life of its
own, strangely, in the lengthy end credits. For all the seriousness of
the film's personality, the theme's constructs and rhythm would seem too
positively upbeat for Hill's sensibilities. If you took out the bouncing
basketball effect and castanets (clearly meant for location
authenticity), you could easily place the theme in a context like
Rudy and get the same effectively rousing result. With the
composer's familiar pipe organ-like electronics, however, the theme
raises fond memories of
Under Fire and, by the full orchestral
accompaniment at the end, it stands among the more inspirational, if not
bizarrely placed themes in Goldsmith's illustrious career. Hill and
Goldsmith, despite their good intentions to do so, would never
collaborate again.
The history of Goldsmith's score for
Extreme
Prejudice on album has been largely satisfying. Outstanding sound
quality has always been a major attraction for the score, presenting
some of
Under Fire's instrumentation and structure in a much more
vibrant soundscape. Recorded and mastered digitally (still not a
guarantee in 1987), the score sounds just as dynamic as many of
Goldsmith's last efforts 15 year later. The trumpets are especially well
emphasized in the mix. Despite reports of poor performance standards
from the Hungarian ensemble used for
Extreme Prejudice (as
opposed to the standard of excellence established in London), the group
does reasonably well and maintains the extremely solid "Goldsmith tone"
heard in the performances by better known musicians. Only in a few of
the action cues do a couple of the horns slur higher-range notes in
multitudes (and it's hard to tell if it is intentional when two or more
of the players are making the same possible mistake). A 50-minute album
of
Extreme Prejudice was released concurrently by Silva Screen
and Intrada Records (in Europe and America respectively) in 1987.
Already featuring the major cues from the score and superior sound
quality for the era, the albums were a small but satisfying revelation
for Goldsmith collectors breaking into the CD market. Those albums stood
alone (and forgotten almost as much as the film) until an expanded
re-release of
Extreme Prejudice by La-La Land Records in early
2005 became the first commercial album to honor Goldsmith after his
death in 2004. The additional 15 minutes of material on the 2005 album
will be of a basic interest to Goldsmith collectors, especially in that
the inferior but necessary film versions of the bank robbery cues are
now available, but the majority of thematic material already existed on
album. While many of the newly released cues are short and of little
consequence, La-La Land has taken the original masters for the score and
enhanced them to be even more dynamic than before, making
Extreme
Prejudice one of the best-sounding Goldsmith scores of the era. If
you want to hear what the live performances of Goldsmith's synthetic
elements probably sounded like, then this album is a fascinating
listening experience. With the propulsive performances of the memorable
"soldier" and "Mexican" themes in the latter half of the score
(amounting to over sixteen minutes of combined music), there is some
very strong material highlighting this otherwise average and derivative
Goldsmith work.
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- Score as Heard in the Film: ***
- Score as Heard on the 1987 Albums: ***
- Score as Heard on the 2005 Album: ****
- Overall: ***
| Bias Check: |
For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.3
(in 113 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.32
(in 144,804 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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