Buy it... if you enjoy the strong, rhythmic balance between orchestra and electronics heard in Jerry Goldsmith's classics of the 1980's (notably Under Fire).

Avoid it... if you already own the one of the original 1987 albums and are satisfied with the decent sound quality and cue selection of those products.

Goldsmith

Extreme Prejudice: (Jerry Goldsmith) The name of director/producer Walter Hill is synonymous with gritty action of the 1980's, born out of the stylistic genre created by Sam Peckinpah decades earlier and revised for the era of honor exemplified by Rambo and a rash of cops and western films along a similar vein at the time. Like many of the films in this genre, Extreme Prejudice is largely forgotten today, its stars faded and genre largely neglected. Its premise involves a good versus evil battle of torn love and drug trade in a small Texas town on the Mexican border, with the drug lord and Texas Ranger standing firm for their convictions until the obligatory duel of Peckinpah proportions at the end of the film. Relying on the building of suspense through brooding weight and occasional massive bloodshed, Extreme Prejudice added a twist of modern military commandos to the traditional Western setting, updating the genre for Rambo-friendly audiences. Composer Jerry Goldsmith was, of course, no stranger to this genre, and it was by the fate of mistaken timing that he landed on the project of Extreme Prejudice. Hill's usual collaborator was Ry Cooder, who passed on the project due to scheduling conflicts that turned out to resolve themselves. By then, Goldsmith was at work on the film and Cooder only provided a handful of source cues as a contribution. While Goldsmith's exemplary work of the 1980's --the most inventive decade of his career and arguably the best-- often saved sub-average films from the pits of despair, even an above-average work for Extreme Prejudice failed to salvage the film for mainstream American audiences. Hill was never a fan of large orchestral scores --something he saw as a relic of 1950's vistas-- and was likely swayed to hire Goldsmith in part because of the composer's versatility with synthesizers at the time. Coming off of Hoosiers just months before, Goldsmith had proven that his synthesizers could be combined with an orchestral ensemble to create a magnificent result in situations where the synths were certainly not a logical choice of instrumentation.

Despite the brilliance Goldsmith displayed with such cases like Hoosiers and Under Fire given synth-defying genres, the composer would have a difficult time reprising that quality for Extreme Prejudice. The elements are all exactly the same from those two previous scores; in fact, if you take the orchestral ensemble and the array of electronic samples that Goldsmith would use for Extreme Prejudice, you'd hear a significant influence from Hoosiers and Under Fire, with several hints of experimentation that would yield great results a few years later in Total Recall (and even Star Trek: Insurrection much later) as well. You can easily hear the wheels turning in Goldsmith's head when working on Extreme Prejudice, because the maturity of his synthetic/orchestral marriage was fine-tuned by that point and consistent as ever. The only problem with the equation this time around, however, was Hill's own extreme prejudice against the traditional sound of the orchestra. Between Hill and the studio, much of Goldsmith's most interesting and heart-pounding music for Extreme Prejudice would never be heard in the film, as Goldsmith's original trailer music for the film --essentially previews of his relevant themes for the score-- was replaced, a funeral cue was cut along with the entire scene, and the lengthy bank robbery cue in the middle of the film was toned back considerably by Hill's request. Goldsmith was always amenable to directors' requests, and he faithfully substituted the more orchestral elements with a harsher electronic ambience. But you can hear two different scores for Extreme Prejudice at work here: Goldsmith's and Hill's, and while you have to admire Hill for sticking to his guns in protecting the sound of his films, a learned Goldsmith collector will hear some outstanding material that many would wish that the composer had expanded upon for Extreme Prejudice. The final result for Hill would be an often edgy score deep in synthetic layers, with all of Goldsmith's recognizable electronic samples ziping, tearing, swooshing, and ticking in every cue. Ironically, it's the collection of bouncing basketball sounds, taken directly from the courts of Hoosiers, that propel the action in Extreme Prejudice.

A substantial amount of interesting, but not necessarily exciting underscore exists in Extreme Prejudice; the score is certainly rich with themes, with motifs repeated for all three lead characters, the soldiers, and a sort of Mexican-influenced title theme that will later steal the show. But these themes are often muted by the limited capabilities of a synthesizer array held to a maximum volume by Hill's vision of Western tension. Only two of the themes that Goldsmith created for Extreme Prejudice are readily memorable, and it is no coincidence that they are the ones featured with prominent orchestral performances over those synthesizers. When Goldsmith allowed himself to explore this avenue, the score takes on very similar traits to Under Fire, which offered a heartbreaking combination of synth and orchestra for major thematic statements. The first outstanding piece in Extreme Prejudice is the rejected "The Plan" cue, a lengthy concert-style action piece that concludes with four minutes of outstanding brass performances of the "soldier theme" that rival Goldsmith's best action music of the era. Any Goldsmith collector will hear the latter half of this cue and immediately scratch his/her head in questioning the sanity of Hill's demands. Where Goldsmith did succeed in inserting his grand orchestral/synth balance to outstanding results is in the very final moments of the score. In the latter half of the film, he takes a motif barely stated in the first half and expands upon it until it is, by the end credits, the only theme you'll remember from the film. Dubbed a "Mexican theme," it debuts in full during "No Friendlies" and takes on a life of its own, strangely, in the end credits. For the seriousness of the film, the theme's construct and rhythm would seem too upbeat for Hill's sensibilities. If you took out the bouncing basketball and castanets (meant for location authenticity), you could easily place the theme in something like Rudy and get the same rousing result. With the same pipe organ-like electronics, however, the theme raises fond memories of Under Fire and by the end, with full orchestral accompaniment, stands among the more inspirational, if not bizarrely placed themes in Goldsmith's career. Hill and Goldsmith, despite their good intentions to do so, would never collaborate again.

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The history of Goldsmith's score for Extreme Prejudice on album has been largely satisfying. Outstanding sound quality has always been a major attraction for the score, presenting some of Under Fire's instrumentation and structure in a much more vibrant soundscape. Recorded and mastered digitally (still not a guarantee in 1987), the score sounds just as dynamic as many of Goldsmith's last efforts 15 year later. Despite reports of poor performance standards from the Hungarian ensemble used for Extreme Prejudice (as opposed to the standard of excellence established in London), the group does reasonably well and maintains an extremely solid "Goldsmith sound" heard in performances by better known musicians; only in a few of the action cues do a couple of the horns slur higher-range notes in multitudes (and you never know if that is intentional when two or more of the players are making the same possible mistake). A 50-minute album of Extreme Prejudice was released concurrently by Silva Screen and Intrada Records (in Europe and America respectively) in 1987. Already featuring the major cues from the score and superior sound quality for the era, the albums were a small, but satisfying revelation for Goldsmith collectors breaking into the CD market. Those albums stood alone (and forgotten almost as much as the film) until an expanded re-release of Extreme Prejudice by La-La Land Records in early 2005 became the first commercial album to honor Goldsmith after his death in 2004. The additional 15 minutes of material on the 2005 album is of a basic interest to Goldsmith collectors, especially in that we now have the inferior but necessary film versions of the bank robbery, but the majority of thematic material was already existing on album. While many of the newly released cues are short and of little consequence, La-La Land has taken the original masters for the score and enhanced them to sound even more dynamic than before, making Extreme Prejudice one of the best-sounding Goldsmith scores of the era. If you want to hear what Goldsmith's samples probably sounded like in his own studio, then this album is a fascinating listen. With the pronounced performances of the memorable "soldier" and "Mexican" themes in the latter half of the score, there is some very strong material mixed in with this otherwise average Goldsmith work.

Score as Heard in Film: ***
Score as Heard on 1987 Albums: ***
Score as Heard on 2005 Album: ****
Overall: ***

Bias Check:

For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.22 (in 111 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.36 (in 120,040 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.