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| Goldsmith |
High Velocity: (Jerry Goldsmith) Although it skirts
the same issues that eventually informed
First Blood a few years
later, 1976's
High Velocity was a lower-rate project and made as
much commentary about the politics of the Philippines as the agony of
the men who fought the Vietnam war, though that conflict still haunts
the two leads here. Those mercenaries are hired to rescue an American
executive who was taken hostage by guerrilla fighters in the
Philippines. This private army of two manages to find the man but
realizes all too late that the entire operation was set up to cover the
tracks of other wealthy white men. A mistress is involved as well,
naturally, and she doesn't have kind thoughts for any of the
protagonists. Although
High Velocity lurches to a very
unsatisfactory ending, it does exhibit some worthy bonding between the
mercenaries via the chemistry between actors Ben Gazzara and Paul
Winfield, and the movie offers just enough explosions and killings to
keep it rooted in the action genre. The film represented the one and
only venture at the helm for its novice director, and it disappeared
from memory with haste. Never seeming to find a way to avoid such
assignments was composer Jerry Goldsmith, who approached this film with
a seemingly unfair amount of seriousness. Stylistically, the music for
High Velocity would serve as a testing ground for works like
Under Fire and
First Blood, but nothing as impressive
would emerge here. The composer utilizes a sizable orchestra for this
score and augments it with a variety of interesting soloists to yield a
blend of Latin and Asian tones, mostly the former. For some listeners,
the foreign sound may be too disjointed from the symphonic elements or,
more likely, regionally illogical. But the blend generally works when
you assume that the average viewer of this film isn't striving for
intellectual stimulation.
The instrumental highlights of
High Velocity
include cimbalom, marimba, harpsichord, acoustic guitar, castanets, and
exotic percussion, the last of which embodied most by seed shakers and
medium drums. Listeners may be surprised by how much of a Latin tilt
these performers generate, the sense of jungle tribalism intruding at
times but the whole sounding as though the music would feel at home in
Central America. It's in some of these hints that Goldsmith collectors
may hear similarities to
Under Fire. While there seems to be an
occasional contribution from synthetics, they don't feature as
prominently as in concurrent efforts in the same genre. The orchestral
presence isn't particularly deep, with some passages of atonality and
stingers proving a challenge, but the spread of their duties is pretty
typically handled by the composer. Most of the suspense and mayhem in
High Velocity is provided by Goldsmith's suspense and action
formations for the fuller ensemble, and while there are motifs at work
in that portion, don't expect them to reach out and grab you. The
material for the villains is built upon a thumping, low piano motif of
ascending minor thirds. It sounds synthetic at times, but that is
difficult to discern because of archival sound quality. This motif is
prominent in the opening and closing moments of "The Hostage" and earns
something of a descending theme over the top of it by "The Mission
Begins." That theme matures in the first half of "Night Flight" over the
explicitly thumping piano motif with a very Latin tone. Of course,
Goldsmith couldn't resist providing a more romantic primary theme
despite the movie's doomed plot. This melancholy and troubled idea never
resolves to a satisfying finish, its main two to three-note figure
leading to an ascending phrase that meanders from there. This main theme
informs the locale-specific pleasantries and action of "Welcome to the
Philippines/The Observers/The Sniper" and consolidates for its first
major performance at 5:14 on cimbalom. It opens "The Night Before" on
flute over acoustic guitar and continues later in the cue.
The main theme emerges from purely Latin guitar rhythms
on flute at 0:34 into "The Mafia Marines," where it builds to a
moderately romantic conclusion with the help of strings and eventually
explores keyboarded elegance in secondary phrasing to suggest the
score's smoothest moment. The highlight cue of "The Hostage" features
the theme on flute and then trumpets and strings, the renderings of this
motif increasing in intensity as the cue progresses. The cimbalom
performance of the theme in the middle of "The Mission Begins" extends
from the suspense motif, and the melody's inverted form struggles early
in "The Rope Trick." It's likewise tortured in "Ring/Not Thirsty" before
securing some empathy in the latter half, further simmering in the
background at the start of "The Archer." The theme offers some respite
from woodwinds early in "Coffee Break" but the cue is distorted in its
sound, and the cimbalom carries the tune in an awkwardly meandering
performance to boot. Closing out the score, Goldsmith presents his main
theme in agony at the start of "Just a Little More/No Victories - End
Title." The latter half of that cue supplies the theme in an accelerated
panic before a short and somewhat overly melodramatic crash for the
hero's death at the end. As a somewhat odd coda, the composer
compromises for a bittersweet performance of the theme for strings and
cimbalom in the very brief "End Title." On the whole, there isn't much
to become excited about in the music for
High Velocity, "The
Hostage" serving as a good, accessible summary for Goldsmith collectors
seeking just a touch of the work in their collection. The purely atonal
parts like "The Rope Trick" are not entirely insufferable, but they are
hampered by an archival sound quality that diminishes their impact. An
extremely dry soundscape restricts the exotic percussion and other
specialty instruments. The score was never released on LP record but
received an equivalently short CD in 1994. That 34-minute presentation
was offered digitally in 2012 without any revisions. It's a completely
serviceable score by Goldsmith, but its poor sound quality and tendency
to exhibit lesser incarnations of music in his other works make it a
merely average experience.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.26
(in 124 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.29
(in 153,454 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes information about the score and film.
