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| Wanker |
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| Kloser |
White House Down: (Thomas Wanker/Harald Kloser)
When they say "timing is everything," that definitely applies to your
blockbuster movie if another nearly identical one has debuted just a few
months earlier. In the case of Roland Emmerich's summer 2013 entry,
White House Down, a very similar storyline was released in the
form of
Olympus Has Fallen, featuring a far better cast, in the
spring of 2013. Not surprisingly, for films that similarly feature
assaults on America's top leadership and hostage-takers in the White
House,
Olympus Has Fallen fulfilled audience expectations and
left few profits for
White House Down; while both films suffered
from critical disbelief resulting from tremendously stupid fallacies of
logic, the latter one was a particular fiscal disaster given that it
cost more than twice as much to produce. In
White House Down,
Jamie Foxx plays the young black American president who is attempting to
negotiate world peace, and that premise alone should cause appropriate
eye-rolling. Traitors within the government, aided by mercenaries, gain
access to and take control of the White House. Along the way, they kill
countless members of the administration, destroy the U.S. Capitol
building and Air Force One, and prepare to initiate war on American
enemies. Just as in
Olympus Has Fallen, a down-and-out man of the
law, in this case on a White House tour at the time of the assault, has
to rescue the president and thus save the free world. Never mind the
fact that world markets would collapse with such action anyway, causing
destruction arguably as detrimental as a nuclear launch. The asininity
of these White House assault films is truly mind-boggling, but then
again, with
White House Down we're dealing with Emmerich, for
whom historical accuracy and geo-political reality has never really
mattered. His poor decisions extend to the music for his more recent
films, those after his disagreement with David Arnold left him with the
Austrian duo of Harald Kloser and Thomas Wanker for each of his projects
since
The Day After Tomorrow in 2004. Kloser has been involved as
a writer and/or producer in a few of these Emmerich films, though for
White House Down he opts for producing and composing only. His
normal associate, Wanker, who changed his name to "Wander" a few years
ago but will remain "Wanker" for Filmtracks' database purposes, started
being credited with primary composing duties as of 2011's
Anonymous.
Kloser and Wanker's music together has been mediocre at
best, hopelessly dull and underplayed in all assignments with the
obvious exception of
10,000 B.C., which remains a rousing guilty
pleasure despite its glaring plagiarism issues. This trend continues,
unfortunately, with
White House Down, yet another instance of the
composers' making no attempt to truly impact a film and choosing instead
to offer non-offensive background music of little consequence. It is one
more example of composers striving to suffice rather than excel. While
Wanker and Kloser attempt to instill the basic necessities for this
topic (patriotism, melodrama, and action), they fail to really succeed
at any of them. You have to wonder how much of this material is actually
the work of orchestrator and conductor James Brett, who has rather badly
fleshed out their music for years. For the drama of
White House
Down, the composers provide a satisfying but anonymous primary theme
that bookends the film and its soundtrack album. The 5-minute
arrangement of the idea to open the album is pretty and vaguely heroic,
but its attempt to resurrect Jerry Goldsmith from the grave is badly
inept. Instead, this material, like the action that follows, sounds like
a badly dated emulation of 1990's Media Ventures equivalents. The
static, somewhat anthemic theme follows early Hans Zimmer methodology,
lacking sufficient compositional complexity or convincing performance
emphasis to distinguish itself. Only an occasional snare burst supplies
the score with any sense of patriotism. The light ostinatos carry over
from
10,000 B.C., without much impact due to low mixing levels.
The straight action and thriller material represents the worst of the
Media Ventures era with harsh orchestra hits (samples?) and rhythmic
gurgling and sound effects that may have impressed in 1998 but not
fifteen years later. Completely devoid of excitement or suspense is this
action music, likely leaving the listener bored or annoyed. Wanker and
Kloser make no attempt to manipulate the main theme into darker,
convoluted variants for the dangers faced by the characters in this
plot; essentially, you get the opening and closing capitulations of the
theme, some generic happiness in a vintage James Newton Howard mould in
early cues, and then the bulk of rather useless thriller ramblings in
the middle. It's remarkable how ineffectual these two composers have
made themselves through the years, prompting film music fans to fret
about what might happen to the legacy of Arnold's
Independence
Day music should Emmerich proceed with sequels. As for
White
House Down, save the two thematic statements for a pleasantly
brainless background listening experience and discard the rest,
including the sadly hideous song at the end of the album.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For Harald Kloser reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.56
(in 9 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 2.54
(in 3,748 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes a list of performers but no extra information about
the score or film.
