{"id":2854,"date":"2011-05-04T17:43:12","date_gmt":"2011-05-04T21:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=2854"},"modified":"2011-05-04T17:43:12","modified_gmt":"2011-05-04T21:43:12","slug":"cd-broken-arrow-1996","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=2854","title":{"rendered":"CD: Broken Arrow (1996)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Soundtrack \u00a0Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>B<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Rating: Excellent<\/p>\n

Label: La-La Land Records\/ Released: February 15, 2011<\/p>\n

Tracks & Album Length:\u00a0CD 1: 13 tracks \/ (55:18) —\u00a0CD 2: 10 tracks \/ (60:38)<\/p>\n

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Special Notes: 20-page colour booklet with liner notes by Al Kaplan \/ Limited to 3000 copies.<\/p>\n

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Composer: Hans Zimmer<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

The pairing of director John Woo with Speed<\/strong> writer Graham Yost produced a guilty pleasure rather than an action classic, here filled with the visual, verbal and performance bombast that\u2019s either endemic or a highpoint of loud nineties action films.<\/p>\n

Woo\u2019s style mandated an ongoing stream of melodrama, with big sounds in music and effects, and musical themes leadened with sincere gravitas that on occasion<\/em> were conceived as deliberately tongue-in-cheek.<\/p>\n

Hans Zimmer\u2019s career during the nineties often had the composer scoring 5-7 projects in one year (hence the frequent claims by his critics that he was more of a ringleader of soundalike composers rather than a singular creative voice).<\/p>\n

Even if the score is drenched in the crashing bass booms that immediately identify a Zimmer score (composed solely or in part), Broken Arrow<\/strong> is influential for being the prototypical nineties action score, and the compositional style all producers and studios wanted slapped onto their summer tent pole pictures.<\/p>\n

Zimmer\u2019s music was rarely applied to small dramatic works during this period. His ability to draw and heighten heroism with grand orchestral strokes remains untouchable, as well as his pioneering work in creating a perfect orchestral-electronic hybrid which impressed blockbuster producers as well as Woo, whose images needed broad dramatic musical strokes.<\/p>\n

In Broken Arrow<\/strong>, the story of a rogue going after missiles provided the perfect musical contrast: an evil, arrogant, self-amused villain, and his younger do-good opponent, backed by a spunky female national parks ranger.<\/p>\n

The score is filled with synth chorals to enhance moments of desperation (\u201cGoing to War\u201d), atmospheric drones and rippling percussion for prolonged moments of suspense (\u201cThe Search \/ Broken Arrow\u201d or the pounding tempo in \u201cHumvee Chase), and giddy energy using simple devices such as a percolating cluster of notes on banjo (\u201cDesert Dawn\u201d).<\/p>\n

Moreover, the composer made use of guitarist Duane Eddy\u2019s guitar licks in the score\u2019s highpoint theme for the once-brotherly relationship that existed between the two opposing men, a theme that proved so popular it not only became part of the Scream 2<\/strong> temp track used by that film\u2019s editors, but was mixed into the film and became Officer Dewey\u2019s theme.<\/p>\n

La-La Land\u2019s 2-disc set presents the score in a deluxe edition with unedited and used cues, album and film versions, plus every incarnation of \u201cFire in a Brooklyn Theater,\u201d the famous piece composed by Randy Edelman for Come See the Paradise<\/strong> (1990) which became the de facto climactic music in many action film trailers that decade.<\/p>\n

Zimmer\u2019s score is filled with contemporary sounds, classical allusions, and rock-heavy beats, all tailor-made for Woo\u2019s dramatic template where former great friends or men cut from the same cloths take different paths and become dangerous foes, wreaking havoc before good triumphs after a prolonged bloodbath.<\/p>\n

For Woo, the score also contained the core bombastic elements for Mission: Impossible II<\/strong> (2000), one of the director\u2019s worst films, and Face\/Off<\/strong> (1997), scored by then-newcomer John Powell in a heavy emulation of all things loud and Zimmerlisch before Powell reasserted himself in the Bourne<\/strong> franchise.<\/p>\n

Zimmer didn\u2019t really become trapped with this sound because he used subsequent action films to train younger composers, but his dilemma was being in demand for same-sounding scores, many of which sound like music by one amorphous group of Zimmer soundalikes .<\/p>\n

This 2-disc set also features additional cues by Harry Gregson-Williams and Don Harper, but unlike The Rock<\/strong> (1996) rubbish like Chill Factor<\/strong> (1999), Broken Arrow<\/strong> represents the apex of Zimmer\u2019s action writing, and perhaps music written for Woo during his uneven period in the U.S. (Hard Target<\/strong>, scored by Graeme Revell, is more of a swampy man-to man combat drama, and remains the lone exception.)<\/p>\n

There still is much to admire in the craftsmanship of such iconic bombast, and while the score may have several unintentionally amusing moments, it\u2019s an important score in the evolution of action film scoring.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2011 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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External References:<\/p>\n

IMDB <\/a>— Soundtrack Album<\/a> — Composer Filmography<\/a><\/p>\n

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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Soundtrack Reviews<\/a> <\/em>\/\u00a0B<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to:\u00a0Home \/\u00a0Soundtrack \u00a0Reviews \/ B . Rating: Excellent Label: La-La Land Records\/ Released: February 15, 2011 Tracks & Album Length:\u00a0CD 1: 13 tracks \/ (55:18) —\u00a0CD 2: 10 tracks \/ (60:38) . Special Notes: 20-page colour booklet with liner notes by Al Kaplan \/ Limited to 3000 copies. . Composer: Hans Zimmer . . […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[20],"tags":[162],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-K2","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2854"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2854"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2860,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2854\/revisions\/2860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}