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Review of Extreme Prejudice (Jerry Goldsmith)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you have always admired the vibrant, rhythmic balance
between orchestra and electronics heard in Jerry Goldsmith's classics of
the 1980's, notably Under Fire and Hoosiers.
Avoid it... on the 2005 or 2021 albums if you already own the one of the original 1987 products representing this solid but derivative score and are satisfied with the surprisingly decent sound quality and cue selection of those earlier products.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Extreme Prejudice: (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 Rambo and a rash of law enforcement and Western films along
similar lines at the time. Like many of the movies in this genre, 1987's
Extreme Prejudice 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, Extreme Prejudice added
a twist of modern military commandos to the traditional Western setting,
updating the genre for Rambo-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 Extreme
Prejudice. 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 his 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 Extreme
Prejudice failed to salvage the film for mainstream American
audiences. Hill was never a fan of large orchestral scores, a sound he
believed 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 Hoosiers just months
before, Goldsmith had proven that his electronics 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 had 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 Hungarian orchestral ensemble and the array of electronic keyboarding and effects that Goldsmith used 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, too. 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 was never heard in the film. Just 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, removing the orchestra. 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 its 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 might wish that the composer had expanded upon for Extreme Prejudice. The composer's intended final result for Hill was 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 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.
TRACK LISTINGS:
1987 Intrada/Silva Albums:
Total Time: 49:59
2005 La-La Land Album: Total Time: 64:10
* previously unreleased cue ** not used in final version of film 2021 Intrada Album: Total Time: 118:24
* previously unreleased ** contains previously unreleased music
NOTES & QUOTES:
The inserts of the 1987 albums include no extra information
about the score or film. The La-La Land album of 2005 and Intrada album
of 2021 feature extensive information about both the score and film. A
portion of the proceeds from the sale the 2005 product was initially
donated to the Jerry Goldsmith Scholarship Fund for Film Music
Composition.
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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from Extreme Prejudice are Copyright © 1987, 2005, 2021, Intrada Records, Silva Screen Records, La-La Land Records, Intrada Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 2/12/05 and last updated 9/14/21. |
