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 the lead character, the soldiers, and a two-part, Latin-influenced main theme that eventually steals the show. But these themes are often muted by the limited capabilities of a synthesizer array pushed to 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 hearing the latter half of this cue will immediately scratch his or her head in the act of questioning the sanity of Hill's demands. The soldier theme is a rising series of phrases that opens the score in "Arrivals" and is a frequent tool of gritty suspense thereafter, adapted to propulsive machismo by "Out of Business." Ghostly trumpet figures a la Patton often follow these characters at an echoing distance, a convenient stinger device. A theme for Nick Nolte's lead ranger character is a descending figure, an interesting twist in that this score applies downward phrasing for heroes and upward movement for villains. Between "The Morning After" and "The Funeral," Goldsmith develops the idea mainly for woodwinds, its main five-note descent transitioning to solo trumpet, the composer's usual choice for solitary heroism. By the end of "The Bank," this theme becomes a massive rhythmic force countering the score's other themes, and it survives as the most organic in the work. Where the composer succeeds 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.

Alternately a theme for Mexico and the lead love affair, this final theme in Extreme Prejudice debuts in full during "No Friendlies" and takes on a life of its own in the lengthy end credits ("A Deal"). The theme has two parts, its Under Fire-like location representation at 2:38 into "To Mexico," its final note often trailing off on synthesizer. The love theme that develops out of a related villain's identity makes its first major appearance at 0:58 into "No Friendlies," and these two intertwining ideas guide subsequent cues in subtle fragments. As previewed by "No Friendlies," Goldsmith runs both these motifs at once, and in "A Deal," he caps off the cue by adding the ranger's descending brass lines on top of them. It's a remarkably intelligent treatment for a schlocky Western score but addictive nonetheless. For all the seriousness of the film's personality, the location and romance theme's constructs and rhythm would seem too positively upbeat for Hill's sensibilities. If you took out the bouncing basketball-bouncing 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 pan pipe-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 unusually placed themes in Goldsmith's illustrious career. Hill and Goldsmith, despite their good intentions to do so, never collaborated again. The history of Goldsmith's score for Extreme Prejudice on album has been largely satisfying, though. 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, which was still not a guarantee in 1987, the score sounds just as dynamic as many of Goldsmith's efforts 15 years later. The trumpets are especially well emphasized in the mix. Despite long-lingering reports of poor performance standards from the Hungarian ensemble used for Extreme Prejudice, the group does reasonably well and maintains the recognizable "Goldsmith tone" heard in the performances by better-practiced film score 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 that 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. Featuring the major cues from the score and surprisingly 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 the prior year. The additional 15 minutes of material on the 2005 album will be of a moderate interest to Goldsmith collectors, especially in that the inferior but necessary film versions of the bank robbery cue was now available (these are truly awful cues by Goldsmith standards; they really illuminate Hill's poor tastes with total clarity, and the composer does earn kudo points for offering those humiliating recordings rather than refuse), but the majority of attractive thematic material already existed on album as per Goldsmith's original programatic desires. While many of the newly released cues are short and of little consequence, La-La Land had 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. In 2021, Intrada revisited the score in another limited pressing, altering the order of the presentation and adding a few additional minutes of material ("A Nice Fellow," "Out of Business," and a snippet in "The Plan"). Some material on the 2005 album was not included by Intrada in 2021. The synthetic replacement cues, which are truly a shame, are again appended, as is the original album presentation from 1987. The music was once again remastered, though no significant improvement over the 2005 album's quality is discernable. The basketball-bouncing effect does seem more prominently dry compared to the surrounding elements on this album, though. Still, aside from that, if you want to hear what the live performances of Goldsmith's synthetic elements probably sounded like on the stage, then the longer albums are a fascinating listening experience. With the propulsive performances of the driving thematic maturation in the latter half of the score, amounting to over sixteen minutes of combined music necessary in any Goldsmith collection, there remains some very memorable material highlighting this otherwise brief, average, and derivative Goldsmith work.   @Amazon.com: CD or Download