Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #679
Written 6/15/98, Revised 11/8/11
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Buy it... only if you consider yourself an extreme James Horner
collector and would thus be interested in eight or so minutes of a
decent orchestral theme unrelated to the rest of the score.
Avoid it... if the idea of 45 minutes of Horner's standard crashing
of piano, snare, and chimes as suspense stingers, along with a plethora
of barely audible underscore, isn't worth the problematic album.
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| Horner |
The Pelican Brief: (James Horner) From Klute
to Presumed Innocent, a movie directed by Alan Pakula is
typically defined by a high-quality suspense story about well hidden
corruption in the genres of law, journalism, and politics. The 1993
thriller The Pelican Brief touches upon all of these categories,
with its story closely following John Grisham's best-selling novel of
the same name. Julia Roberts is a law student with a sharp mind and an
inquisitive nature, and her theory about a conspiracy behind the deaths
of two American Supreme Court justices inks her name on the
perpetrators' hit list. She teams up with a sympathetic Denzel
Washington who, as a reporter, dodges the same assassination attempts on
their lives in an effort to reveal the truth. Pakula's films have never
been inclined to demand large-scale or thematically complex original
music out of their composers. In this case, with a seemingly snug fit
between Grisham and Pakula in place, the duties of the composer would
fall upon James Horner, whose popularity was nearing its height in the
industry even though he was still branching out into projects that
didn't reside in his normal realm of operation. With many similarities
in construct and demeanor, The Pelican Brief would be the same
score for Horner that Presumed Innocent was a few years earlier
for John Williams. Though both scores are introverted, tense,
piano-dominated works, Horner's ability to generate a similar sense of
sophistication in its atmosphere falls far short of Williams' ability to
do the same. Thus, while Presumed Innocent and The Pelican
Brief essentially utilize the same spirit of minimal ambient
suspense (despite a more chase-oriented action tilt in the latter),
Williams' tackling of the job is leagues beyond Horner's music in
quality and class. Like his scores for the Tom Clancy/Jack Ryan films
that debuted in the same era of Horner's career (Patriot Games
and Clear and Present Danger), The Pelican Brief is a
largely underachieving and uninspired score. Playing once again on ideas
that Horner had already established in other works, there is little
structural or instrumental intrigue worth mentioning about The
Pelican Brief that could define it as a unique work or elevate it
beyond its peers. That said, it contains enough moments of pleasant
atmosphere and quiet melody to secure a place in many Horner
collections.
Not all of Horner's minimalistic efforts are as dull as
The Pelican Brief. He has proven with
Thunderheart and
The Spitfire Grill that some outstanding personality can be
expressed in his softer mode. And while
The Pelican Brief has the
same character-centered focus as
Searching for Bobby Fischer and
The Man Without a Face, it restrains its emotions to a far less
dramatic level. Before diving into the faults of the music for
The
Pelican Brief, it should be praised for two cues that will likely
appeal to enthusiasts of the scores mentioned above. Together, "Darby's
Theme" and "Airport Goodbye" present about eight minutes of fully
orchestral melody, not unique in its own characteristics, but built on a
familiar, fluid string identity. The former track is seemingly a concert
arrangement representing the score, four minutes not mixed into the
final cut of the film. The latter cue may grace the end credits with
resolute thematic beauty, but the rest of the score is an exercise in
Horner's usual suspense tactics. Although the composer's typical piano
crashes during moments of cinematic distress are nothing new, he takes
them beyond simple stringers and forces then to thrash the listener with
their ferocious rumblings. All too often, a pleasant, rambling piano
motif or extended sequence of barely audible strings is interrupted by
one of these outbursts. Tapping percussion, including a light snare in
consistent rhythms, leads the score from one non-descript suspense cue
to the next. When matters of importance occur, the crashing of chimes,
in similar fashion to the piano, will also raise many memories for
Horner collectors. Light clicking and high-toned electronic choir over
synthetic bass and tingling keyboard rhythms, such as the ambience of
"Researching the Brief," foreshadowed
The Spitfire Grill. Such
music would make for a very consistent listening experience if not for
the crashing, staggering chase sequences, which play tricks with you by
executing similar techniques every time the nervous Roberts looks over
her shoulder at something (whether innocent or threatening). There are
few direct, long quotations of music from Horner's previous work, but
learned ears will easily get the impression that the composer was not
even attempting to break new conceptual ground with
The Pelican
Brief. A lengthy album extends the suffering, and some pressings of
the eventually out-of-print product contained faulty laser engraving
that makes it difficult for various CD players to recognize the
parameters of each track. If Horner's music was any better, there'd be
reason to worry about this fault.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
Bias Check:
For James Horner reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.15
(in 108 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.23
(in 203,564 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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