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FILMTRACKS.COM
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of Last Man Standing (Elmer Bernstein/Ry Cooder)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... on the Ry Cooder album only if you are a collector of his
works; the Bernstein album will likewise only appeal to collectors of
the composer's modern scores.
Avoid it... on the Ry Cooder album at all costs if you are a traditional film score collector.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Last Man Standing: (Elmer Bernstein/Ry Cooder)
Sergio Leone's 1964 A Fistful of Dollars with Clint Eastwood was
an adequate American interpretation of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo
from three years prior, though for some reason, director Walter Hill
decided to make the same adaptation once again in the 1990's. Hill moves
the setting up by another few decades into the prohibition era and, of
course, inserts his usual excessive glorification of violence. The "no
name man" who walks into 1920's Jericho this time is Bruce Willis, who
may very have been perfect for the part, but in the process of
destabilizing the truce between two Chicago bootlegging crime
organizations in the small town (which leaves a whole lot of logical
questions by itself), Willis takes advantage of his independent
gunslinger skills to maim and kill people who obviously deserve such an
end. And unless you're a fan of Hill's notion that it takes 40 bullets
from tommy guns (shown very explicitly) to kill a man, then there's
really no redeeming value in the film. Shunned by audiences in 1996, the
film also suffered the wrath of critics, who easily exposed problems
including the conflicting costume and set design for the period, Hill's
bleaching of color from the film so that everything exists in a hazy
yellow dust, and Ry Cooder's completely out-of-place electronic score
that lets rip with some nasty rock sequences that the 57 people of
Jericho could never have conceived of. Before Cooder's contribution,
however, came a vibrant orchestral score from veteran Western composer
Elmer Bernstein, who had transitioned from comedies in the 1980's to
light dramas in the early 1990's. For Bernstein, Last Man
Standing would be among the last opportunities to score a
significant action picture on serious levels (Wild Wild West is
much closer to his parody period than this), and for collectors of the
composer weary of his minimal output at the time, Last Man
Standing was an impressive orchestral explosion for that era in his
career.
Bernstein's score revolves around a single main theme developed immediately and strongly in the opening cue (and eventually fading without victory in "One of the Last"), and the theme's identity involves a much stronger sense of pounding rhythm than we had heard for several years from Bernstein. A timpani and brass fanfare opens and closes the film, complete with gong and tapping light percussion; several cues within the score also let rip with the timpani, broad cymbal crashes, and other percussive diversity that is assisted by a clear recording quality. High volume brass sequences litter the score, though their performances aren't particularly memorable outside of their basic propulsive nature. The "Hijacking" cue throws a snare into some of these outbursts, providing some truly menacing moments. Comedy cues seem completely misplaced, however, as Bernstein can't seem to resist the dry humor in some of Willis' performance and returns to 1980's form. Conversational cues, such as "Felina's Story" make use of pleasant woodwind solos (no ondes martenot, though essentially similar), and if you step back and look at Bernstein's score as a whole, it's hard not to get the impression that the music was just not menacing or drab enough for Hill's vision of the tale. If Hill was looking for a score as gratuitous as the film's violence, then it's clear why Bernstein was fired from this job and his music thrown out. Despite the score being one of Bernstein's more impressive large-scale efforts of the 1990's, and Bernstein's understandable anger over the rejection of his work (which happened on five or six major films in the last decade of his career), Hill ended up with a replacement score that was even worse. Ry Cooder only writes film scores on the periphery in his career, and while his score on the surface might sound like something George S. Clinton or even Randy Edelman might write, his music here is nothing less than atrocious considering the era and location of the film. Cooder's title theme is a rocking electric guitar and saxophone motif that tears at the lowest ranges of both instruments. The rhythm to this theme is good, and the band drums and assortment of ticking high percussion is faintly enjoyable, but once again, it has nothing to do with Jericho whatsoever. It's as though Hill went to Cooder and said "Bernstein's given me a geriatric score... spice this thing up with coolness." Outside of the title theme at the beginning and end, Cooder offers nothing but droning electronics and occasional sound effect samples, plunging the score into monotony and occasional irritation. In "Lucy's Ear" and "Bathtub," the guitar and sax return in painfully slow, meandering tones. Cooder's most interesting point includes a bizarre pipe organ and female vocal effect with the guitar in "Drive to Slim's." The entire endeavor seems pointless without the pizzazz of the opening theme, and Cooder's work offers nothing memorable. At its best, you get a solo acoustic guitar that Brokeback Mountain fans will recognize. There's a soft rock song (without vocals) in the final track on the album that would be a pleasant listen on a tropical island somewhere. The snazzy title theme will win some fans, too, but the rest of it is a wasteland of basic synths. You have to wonder if Hill listened to Cooder's faux Western rock score and had a fleeting thought of resurrecting Bernstein's recordings for the picture. At any rate, the film was unsalvageable anyway, so who cares? On album, few people seem to have taken an interest. The Cooder score is long out of print and is sought mostly by fans of the artist. Among all of Bernstein's rejected scores of the 1990's, Last Man Standing received a rare release from Varèse Sarabande that remains a little more readily available on the secondary market. Sound quality on both albums is commendable, which serves Bernstein's score more than Cooder's, for the vibrant recording quality puts a spark of life into his serious action rhythms. Film score fans should ignore the Cooder product all together, and Bernstein's album receives a luke warm recommendation. It doesn't seem like it would have fit the picture all too well, but on its own, it contains flashes of energy that went sadly missing from many of Bernstein's final scores.
TRACK LISTINGS:
Ry Cooder Score:
Total Time: 70:57
Elmer Bernstein Score: Total Time: 32:27
NOTES & QUOTES:
The Cooder album insert includes a note from director Walter Hill.
The Bernstein album includes general information about Bernstein and artist
Matthew Joseph Peak, who painted the artwork for the album.
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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 Last Man Standing are Copyright © 1996, Verve Records, Varèse Sarabande (Rejected) and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 9/28/96 and last updated 5/21/06. |
