by Swashbuckler on 5/6/2000
 
Jerry Goldsmith has always provided great music for adventure films, and this is a powerhouse score for John McTiernan and Michael Crichton's film about an Arab who falls in with a group of Vikings.

Using the dichotomy between these two worlds as the basis for his score, Goldsmith contrasts the more calm and ordered Arabian material, based around exotic percussion, strings and synthesizers, with the more bombastic French horn and choir Viking music.

Since the film itself boils down to a Seven Samurai lite, the score basically is a series of action cues with a few interludes, and as a result makes for great listening on its own.

For the antagonists, the "Eaters of the Dead," Goldsmith provides a belligerent clarion call (similar to his "bear" motif in The Edge). This shows up in a slew of variations, from percussive punctuation to quiet reminders to forming the basis for some of the action material.

Goldsmith's Viking material, clearly the central motif of this score, is also very versatile and goes through different guises, including an adaptation that becomes a suspense motif.

Breathless action sequences such as "The Fire Dragon" are complimented with the quieter (yet still menacing) "Honey."

All this culminates in the twelve minute "Valhalla/Viking Victory" track, in which all the elements appear in their most pure form, intergrated into a sequence that is bewitching. The Viking fanfare presages an ethereal appearance of the Arabian theme (interupted fairly regularly by the "Eaters of the Dead" motif); which is then followed by the Viking theme again in a form that had not yet been heard, a reverent moment speaking of the Viking virtues of courage and heroism... this leads up to a spirited reading of the Viking theme in its original form as the battle is joined (this part of the cue was inexplicably cut from the film).

The sound is quite good, with spacious acoustics. Perhaps it could have been a bit clearer, but it is certainly good on the whole. The album follows the film order.

This score is something of a return to form for Goldsmith, sort of a "back to the eighties," and it is just as exciting and fun as any of the scores written in that fertile time period.