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Review of Rules of Engagement (Mark Isham)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... only if you appreciated the brief militaristic ensemble
performances as heard in the film, or if you've always enjoyed Mark
Isham's 1983 album "Vapor Drawings."
Avoid it... if you expect any of the elements of this rather dull score to stand alongside the better music that Isham has provided the genre elsewhere.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Rules of Engagement: (Mark Isham) The career of
director William Friedkin has, despite its great successes, been
littered with forgettable, substandard entries. His 2000 film Rules
of Engagement is no longer remembered as one of his projects, but
rather the controversial adaptation of a story written by the then
former Secretary of the Navy, Jim Webb, who would eventually achieve
national fame through his unlikely win of a Senate seat from Virginia.
He was so unhappy with Stephen Gaghan's screenplay and Friedkin's
interpretation of his idea that he threatened to have his name removed
from the project. Ultimately, the offensive material to Webb was
removed, but at a cost of continuity in the film. Despite having talent
all the way up and down the cast and crew, a confusing screenplay with
numerous fallacies of logic doomed Rules of Engagement, not to
mention the shifts between courtroom theatrics and extreme gore. The
storyline follows the predictable path of an American Colonel prosecuted
for murder when he orders lethal force to be used against Yemenese
civilians who may or may not have posed a threat to the American
ambassador there. Friedkin knew from the start exactly what kind of
music he wanted to hear in Rules of Engagement. As a matter of
fact, he had one specific piece of music in mind. He had been a fan of
Mark Isham's composition "On the Threshold of Liberty" from his 1983
solo album "Vapor Drawings," and he used this piece as the temp track
throughout this film (after yearning for years to find a suitable place
for it in one of his projects). He was very pleased when Isham accepted
the offer to actually score the entire film, adapting the previous work
into the fresh soundtrack without attempting to alter its character or
theme too dramatically. Isham's diverse career had never received much
respect for its military components until the composer proved with the
"Army Strong" commercial music of the late 2000's that he could rival
the best at patriotic, orchestral majesty. To a minor extent, Rules
of Engagement is a preview of that sound, but its execution, as well
as the adaptation of the previous theme, is so restricted in scope and
emotion that you end up with a rather mundane listening
experience.
The original recording of "On the Threshold of Liberty" featured electronics, deliberate rhythms, and Isham's trademark trumpet solos. He continues all of them here. The half of the score dominated by ambient sound design, with eerie metallic thumps and groans, is largely unremarkable. A few such cues are actually quite difficult to tolerate. The rhythms and trumpet theme are expanded upon quite elegantly in the opening three cues on album and "Semper Fidelis (Always Faithful)." One of the score's downsides is the brevity of Isham's own performances; his trumpet work is quite compelling and will leave you wishing there was more of it in this score. The slight electronic pulsation effect of the original "On the Threshold of Liberty" recording is translated into muscular percussion and brass in the opening three cues, and the roaring attitude of "Gulf of Aden (USS Wake Island)" will indeed remind you of the "Army Strong" commercial music. The early cues establish a forceful atmosphere of ball-busting patriotism that is completely lost in the remainder of the score, for Isham treats the courtroom and other scenes with such bland, ambient synthetics that the initial five minutes of exuberant character is a faint memory. Fans of "On the Threshold of Liberty," which is provided at the end of this soundtrack for reference, will hear similarities, some intriguingly subtle, between the classic work and this newer score. But the design of the music has changed so much that the audience for the adaptation will likely emerge from the regular orchestral film score collecting crowd rather than early Isham loyalists. The most peculiar aspect of Rules of Engagement is the simple, plain fact that "On the Threshold of Liberty" just isn't worth the stock that Friedkin puts in it. There have been scores fashioned after classic works before, but rarely one as frightfully boring as this one. That's not as much a comment about Isham's talent as it is about Friedkin's individual taste in music. The performances of the adaptation by the London Metropolitan Orchestra are unglamorous, but functional. The album from Milan includes two freshly recorded cues absent from the film; unfortunately, one of these ("Gulf of Aden (USS Wake Island)") is the highlight of the score. The other, "Breach of Peace," is easily the worst cue overall and its omission is understandable. On the whole, there are highlights worth investigating here, but the majority of music is extremely dull. **
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 41:57
* not contained in film ** contains previously written material
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert contains the following note about the music by director William Friedkin:
"Sometime in the mid 1980's, I heard an album called "Vapor Drawings" by Mark Isham. One track in particular stayed with me all these years and I've gone back to listen to it repeatedly. The track is called "On the Threshold of Liberty," and I've wanted to use it in a film since I heard it, but never really had anything that I thought "deserved" this sort of patriotic, wistful, ironic and beautiful melody reminiscent of the music of Aaron Copland. Mark Isham composed and arranged this piece as well as having played the trumpet solo, and over the years I've come to admire his work as a soloist as much as his compositions. We had never met until about a year ago at a small dinner party in the Rocky Mountains. I told Mark how much I loved "On the Threshold of Liberty" and asked him on the spot to write a score for Rules of Engagement. When Mark saw the film, he agreed and proceeded to take on the unusual assignment of revisiting and rearranging a piece of music he had originally composed some fifteen years ago. Since I was using this track to temp dub the film, Mark knew it was safer to try and work with it than convince me to replace it because directors notoriously fall in love with their temps (i.e., Strauss' "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" in Kubrick's 2001) and can't adjust to anything that's meant to replace it. None of this should take away from the fact that Mark has enhanced this theme with a lush and pulse-pounding score that underlines the mood of the film."
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