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Review of Turbulence (Shirley Walker)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if the 1990's action thrillers of Jerry Goldsmith spin
the right mood, for Shirley Walker's similarly constructed and styled
music for this atrocious film offers many of the same perks.
Avoid it... if your appreciation of Walker's smart orchestrations and enthusiastic embrace of aviation glory cannot excuse the overcomplication of her themes, the melodies only appealing at the celebratory end.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Turbulence: (Shirley Walker) Prior to the terrorist
attacks of September 11th, 2001, there was a brief resurgence of
airliner-related thriller films that always seemed to defy gravity and
find new ways to endanger passengers already lacking much needed
legroom. It's unfortunate that such films were rarely shown as free
entertainment on actual flights. One of the worst of this late 1990's
subgenre of hijacking plotlines was Turbulence, a soundly
rejected disaster with critics and audiences at the box office but
sufficiently appealing on home video to spawn two sequels. The 1997
movie allows actor Ray Liotta to do what he does best on screen: creep
the shit out of women. He's one of two criminals being flown across
America on the eve of Christmas by marshals who were hopefully being
paid overtime. When the other criminal attempts to take over the plane
and wipes out those marshals and the two pilots, Liotta's serial
strangler character sweet-talks the flight attendants (were they still
called stewardesses back then?) into allowing him to help. Instead, of
course, he also kills people and threatens to fly the plane into a
building. It's up to one flight attendant portrayed by Lauren Holly to
save the day by battling the strangler and landing the plane, all the
while losing some of her clothing along the way to show off her
physique. Director Robert Butler returned from his television stomping
grounds for the production and, out of seven fairly typical
action-thriller composers of the era considered, chose veteran
orchestrator, conductor, and general film score fixer Shirley Walker to
write the score. That Walker was hired for a solo feature score like
Turbulence was immensely satisfying at the time, both for the
composer and her collectors. She was among the female pioneers in film
scoring during the 1980's and 1990's, a prolific teammate with Danny
Elfman and Hans Zimmer, among others. While she is often credited with
orchestrating and conducting many of their early works, there has always
lingered much banter that Walker was actually ghostwriting portions of
those composers' scores. Her solo projects remained rare, however, the
bulk of her recognition coming with DC Comics spinoff shows. In the
1990's, she had the opportunity to score only about a half dozen scores
on her own, many of them never released on album or challenging to
obtain.
Walker's solo scores tended to sound like a combination of the styles of established composers, much like Joel McNeely and others' careers. In the case of Turbulence, the inspiration was clearly Jerry Goldsmith's sound for this exact subgenre, minus the prominent electronics. Still writing and orchestrating her scores on paper at the time, Walker concocted a decent thriller score with significant orchestral proficiency, largely outsmarting the film at every turn. The breadth of symphonic emphasis is quite impressive, the composer working in each section with tactical precision and wasting no opportunity to directly (and sometimes overwhelmingly) address the emotion of a moment. Stately, militaristic percussion for the marshals at the start shifts to more primordial pounding for the escaped criminals. Brass is applied with shades of both Goldsmith and Basil Poledouris, the latter's rhythmic sense often influencing the work as well. Because of the holiday spirit shown in the film's first scenes, there is a Christmas-inspired feel in woodwinds and percussion at times as well. Groaning dissonant textures from the ensemble battle with Walker's themes for much of the score, while the opening and closing passages have a bloated sense of majesty to them to suggest that a cross-country flight is a sight to behold. The overplay of a cue like "The Take-Off" may repel some listeners, for wholly routine flying doesn't deserve such bright and expressive heroics. The density and volume of the score is attractive on one hand, but on the other, it tends to overwhelm all but the most obvious statements of Walker's melodies. Don't be surprised if you have difficulty identifying her themes through all the orchestration, for the motific structures are also manipulated expectedly as characters are better revealed in the story. One interesting mainstay in the score is the Christmas standard, "Carol of the Bells," a tune liberally adapted by John Williams in his Home Alone scores. Its repeating, four-note descending phrases are especially well manipulated throughout the first half of the score, shifting from its cheery introduction at the beginning to great suspense in "Christmas Shopping." Its holiday charm also pervasively touches the flight preparation and take-off cues, ringing irony to some of the panic cues in the middle portion and turning to outright fright by the end of "Auto Pilot Landing." Ironically, some listeners will leave the score remembering this melody best. Both lead characters in Turbulence receive themes from Walker, with the flight attendant, Teri, receiving five-note phrases that are fragmented throughout the first half of the score and finally lengthen to a full theme in "Auto Pilot Landing." The idea extends to heroic levels in "The Next Sound You Hear," pushes through military rhythms to build confidence late in "Fighter Escort," and overflows with heroic Hollywood bravado in "The Landing." The theme's secondary lines achieve peace on strings to close "Welcome Home, Teri," and the full melody receives warm treatment throughout "End Credits." It's quite a nice identity, but the way Walker fragments its progressions early in the score makes it seem like a late-comer when it actually is not. The character also has a motif for fleeing most often heard when she's escaping the strangler to get back to the cockpit. This idea recurs in these scenarios in "Teri Says No" and "Ryan's Left Foot," returning in a more focused action form early in "The Landing." The strangler's theme is even more obtuse, building out of the carol early on and taking a long time to really identify itself, much like the character. It's built on a series of descending two-note figures followed by three ascending notes and then reprising the original two down. Walker applies only the two-note fragments early, and these applications dissolve into the surrounding activity. The theme finally culminates with clarity in horrifying performances on violins and piccolo in "Last Breath." Related to that character is a more generally applied stalking motif, a stomping percussive rhythm that is the most dominant early in "Topsy Turvy." It culminates in straight, dissonant horror by the start of "Here's Johnny." Walker also supplies a flying motif seemingly for the glory of aviation, introduced with majestic and almost silly excitement in "The Take-Off" and transitioning to frantic variations throughout "747 Flyby." The amount of interconnectivity in this score is admirable, but when stepping back from Turbulence, Walker's music will mostly be remembered as a competent but rather anonymous sibling to Goldsmith's equivalents. On album, the score was belatedly released in 2013 by La-La Land Records, though the limited product never found an audience and languished for a meager $5 from the label many years later. The presentation on that album is generous and includes a rough suite Walker had assembled to represent the score's highlights. While the score isn't particularly unique, it does provide an engaging thriller experience with ten minutes of enthusiastic symphonic celebration at the end. ***
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 78:09
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes notes about the score and film.
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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 Turbulence are Copyright © 2013, La-La Land Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 3/19/22 (and not updated significantly since). |
