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| Shire |
Last Stand at Sabre River: (David Shire) The 1990's
were a coming of age time for the large-scale cable television film,
with cable channels beginning to take the glory of epic TV productions
away from the major networks. Among the films in 1997 that continued
this trend was the Michael Brandman and Tom Selleck production of Elmore
Leonard's novel
Last Stand at Sabre River. The film's aim was
pretty straight forward, catering to the fans of the 1980's breed of new
Western stars, and it's easy to predict whether or not you'll be
enthusiastic about the film based on your opinion of watching Selleck
riding a horse. He stars as a Civil War veteran who reunites with his
family after the conflict and attempts to begin a life together with
them once again, though problems arise when he learns that the old
family homestead has been taken over by powerful family of landowners.
The reluctant cowboy sends his family away, resists the temptation of a
woman from the enemy family, and eventually kills a few people and
rescues a kid from a runaway wagon all in the process of taking back
what's rightfully his. The plot is formulaic, indeed, though the TNT
channel had a knack for catering to fans of such gritty tales, and the
film debuted with a fair amount of fuss. The pinnacle of composer David
Shire's career definitely had come and gone in the 1970's, though he
continued to write solid material well beyond that time, and his
established collaboration with Brandman led to his assignment on
Last
Stand at Sabre River. His instructions were rather general, allowing
him to utilize a moderately sized orchestra as he saw fit. While many of
Shire's assignments in his best known scores have required a unique (and
often small-scale) approach,
Last Stand at Sabre River fit
squarely into a conservative Western genre, so it's no surprise that we
hear a score that squarely reflects that genre.
Shire's work here is intelligent, with several themes
and variants devised with careful thought. He has themes for the main
character, his family, and the competing family, and in some cases,
these themes mutate as the score progresses and the emotions in the
story develop. Interestingly, though, the score seems to have been
over-intellectualized in its sum, leaving the overall impression to be
lacking in any truly distinguishing characteristics. Shire's Western
music is easily at its best when it's moving with an active rhythm, and
it's the "journey" cues (often accented by the stereotypical acoustic
guitar) that serve
Last Stand at Sabre River best. Shire
increases the volume over the rhythms for action pieces such as "Wagon
Chase," but sparse symphonic ambience is a constant reminder that we're
listening to a television score. When the ensemble is needed to be its
most muscular, it often serves as well as it can, but never stirs up
quite enough dust to produce a memorable cue. The moments of suspense
are more serviceable, with strings and horns in the lower regions
resolute in thoughtful situations. The final two cues offer major-key
versions of motifs that had been dull and uninspired thus far, but even
they don't leave you with a distinct memory of the score's merits.
Despite this criticism, Shire's score is indeed functional in what it
needed to accomplish, and it could even be argued that the score is
better than equivalent efforts by Lee Holdridge and other primarily
television film composers of the era. On album,
Last Stand at Sabre
River is a very consistent listening experience, with practically no
jolting moments. Emotional transitions in the music are gracefully
conveyed, which may very well contribute to the score's surprisingly
anonymous flow. To its credit, the album release by Intrada contains
only roughly 40 minutes of music, which is by far enough to satisfy even
the biggest fans of the genre.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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The insert includes detailed descriptions by Shire of certain cues and an extra
note by FSM editor Lukas Kendall.
