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| Tyler |
The Greatest Game Ever Played: (Brian Tyler) Not
everyone thinks of a round of golf as the greatest game ever played,
including George Carlin, who famously called for all the American golf
courses (and cemeteries, of course) to be churned up and used for
affordable, low cost housing. The participants of the also famous 1913
U.S. Open golf championship would hardly agree, for it is that sole
event that occupies the entire story of Bill Paxton's
The Greatest
Game Ever Played. There couldn't be a further departure for Paxton
from his last (and first) film,
Frailty, with
The Greatest
Game Ever Played serving a very familiar process of presenting a
feel-good sports story with a touch of history, romance, and, of course,
the obligatory underdog plot. True to historical record, Francis Ouimet
was an underpriviledged American amateur with a 10-year-old caddy who
defeated renown British player Harry Vardon in the U.S. Open in 1913.
Vardon is a likable character, having grown up in similar circumstances,
and the only villain of the story is a newspaper owner and underwriter
of the British golf team who pressures the older player to win. The
Disney film is anonymous in its lack of star power, and since this basic
type of story has been put on screen so many times, Paxton has had to
rely on new methods of telling the story to distinguish itself over
others (such as giving us shots from the perspective of the golf club
and inevitably the ball). The problem with this scenario is that the
telling of the story has to be really good to survive the competition
from the dozens of rival films, and for the most part,
The Greatest
Game Ever Played received bland reviews and hooked it right out of
the cinemas. A few years back, the score for
The Legend of Bagger
Vance by Rachel Portman passed much like the film, with similar
anonymity problems as this new venture. But Portman's "love it or hate
it" score has become an extremely hot item on the collector's market
since its label was going out of business at print time. Paxton would
reunite with horror score veteran Brian Tyler to try to capture some of
the same Bagger Vance magic.
The interesting thing about Tyler's score for
The
Greatest Game Ever Played is that it competes in the same film and
score genre as John Debney's
Dreamer at about the same time, and
both scores are fascinating studies in how the temp music for a film in
production can affect the final composition. Whereas the veteran Debney
avoids nearly all the pitfalls of the temp score phenomena, Tyler falls
badly into those pitfalls in a few of his major thematic ideas for the
film. Score collectors will immediately recognize the same structure and
orchestration from James Horner's
Legends of the Fall in Tyler's
overture, as his attempt to score the Americana aspect of the story
largely backfires on him. The lush, layered strings combined with an
all-too-familiar theme doom this identity from the start, as does the
rather stale performance by the Los Angeles musicians. A secondary theme
has similarities to the score for
Dust to Glory by newcomer
Nathan Furst earlier in the year (another sports documentary), which is
ironic because that score itself was a lesson in temp music pitfalls.
The great sadness involving
The Greatest Game Ever Played is that
Tyler's underscore outside of the title themes is often very strong,
incorporating a competitive spirit in lively rhythms that raises
memories of his pinnacle
Children of Dune work. These appealing
rhythms use light drums, ethnic flutes, acoustic guitars, and chopping
strings to inject much-needed life into a score that plays much longer
than its 50 minutes on album. Cues such as "Determination," "A Call to
Arms," and "Rain Battle" offer a spirited sense of competition that is
diluted by the lengthy cues of solo piano interpretations of the title
themes. The two performances of "Ride the High Country" (the theme, not
the film) have a snare-driven, Western style that also plays better to
the spirit of the film, leaving listeners wondering why Tyler (or the
filmmakers) were hopelessly attracted to the rehash of
Legends of the
Fall for the "feel-good" drama of the tale. In the end, there are
many similarities between
The Greatest Game Ever Played and
Dreamer, but Debney has a slightly more refined package. The
Tyler score is a pleasant listen from start to end, with consistency as
perhaps one of its awkward faults, and yet it's still refreshing to hear
Tyler branch out from the horror genre that has defined his career to
date. If only the spirit of the end titles replaced the overused drama
in the opening titles,
The Greatest Game Ever Played would be
better able to stand on its own.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For Brian Tyler reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.2
(in 41 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.13
(in 19,672 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes a list of performers and a note from the director about the score.
