Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #1,532
Written 4/12/98, Revised 6/24/06
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Buy it... if you're a fan of badly dated 1970's pop rock of
Shaft variety for your DC Comics superheroes.
Avoid it... if the above statement doesn't sound quite right and
you're tired of highly derivative David Arnold-style orchestral action
music.
Steel: (Mervyn Warren) The only lasting memory that
anyone should have about the dismal Steel film from 1997 was that
it earned basketball great Shaquille O'Neal the second Razzie Award
nomination in his first three films. Ironically, he didn't receive a
Razzie nomination for Kazaam the year previous, the success of
which contributed to his casting as a DC Comics protagonist in
Steel. The story comes from one of DC's lesser known comic
series, though in an age when Batman and Superman had
already been beaten to death in their film franchises, it made sense
that Steel would eventually be made. The story of Steel
involves a trio of scientists who invent a sonic weapon in modern day
Los Angeles. One of them cranks the power on the weapon too high during
a demonstration for a senator and kills the politician and disables the
female member of the group. The surly member who caused these problems
then goes into hiding after being kicked out of the military and, of
course, the sonic weapons start appearing on city streets. That leaves
the fate of the city up to the remaining scientist, who decides to do
what any of us would do: create an alter-ego, a cool outfit, some nifty
gadgets, and set out to destroy the enemy and stop muggings and parking
meter mutilation along the way. Well, there wasn't really any parking
meter mutilation going on, but the minute Shaq turned into Steel,
this film was doomed. It would have seemed that the choice of Kenneth
Johnson as director would have been decent, especially with the TV shows
V, Alien Nation, and The Incredible Hulk under his
belt. But the end result was juvenile, stupid, poorly shot, and suffered
from terrible acting, bad sets, and the ultimate in cheesy underscores
from Mervyn Warren. The career of Warren has varied between the titles
of vocalist, record producer, lyricist, songwriter, arranger, pianist,
and film composer, though he is probably best known as a successful jazz
vocalist for the group Take 6 from 1980 to 1991. On his own, his music
bounces between the genres of pop, R&B, hip-hop, classical, orchestral,
jazz, country, and gospel. Unfortunately, just a few too many of these
genres appear in Steel for it to be taken seriously.
Parts of Warren's score here are nearly laughable in
their silly pop representations of the superhero genre on film. It's
clear that he went for the highest possible "coolness" quotient, but in
the process of trying to produce something as hip as
Shaft, he
brought along the badly dated sound of the 1970's. Somewhere between
Lalo Schifrin and Quincy Jones we get the intolerable title theme for
Steel, complete with the rhythms and instrumentation that makes
that era of yesteryear such a painful episode in the action genre. But
wait... the plot thickens! No superhero score of the 1990's would be
complete without some kickass orchestral performances for the "larger
than life" part of the story. After all, Shaq's a big guy. So Warren
whips up some material highly derivative of
Batman and all of
David Arnold's majestic orchestral action scores of the era and
alternates these performances with the hip 70's rock. There's even the
stereotypical deep male chorus for additional power. The ultimate
failing of
Steel as a score, though, is the constant switching
between the two genres, sometimes with few overlapping moments.
Ironically, the few cues in which the full ensemble is combined with the
rock rhythms and instrumentation, such as in the finale, are somewhat
effective. The baffling part of
Steel, on the surface, are the
occasionally enjoyable, robust orchestral performances, with "Attack on
Federal Reserve" highlighting these numerous cues. But then the name
Nicholas Dodd appears on the packaging (as the conductor in this case),
and suddenly the heavy David Arnold style in the action cues makes
perfect sense; Dodd's involvement in other scores of suspicious quality
(especially those in which the actual composer is out of his league in
the genre) has often led to similar Arnold spin-off sounds in such
scores. The ripping snare rhythms of Danny Elfman's
Batman music
are also quite tired in the score. The album finishes with an
unfortunate pop song with lyrics by the director, and between the song,
the mislabeled tracks on the packaging, and the poor consistency of the
music, the
Steel album is far from being a triumph in the career
of producer Ford A. Thaxton and the now defunct SuperTracks promo
factory. For the orchestral passages,
Steel avoids the lowest
ratings, but it's still a laughable score on the whole.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
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