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The Pelican Brief: (James Horner) Director Alan
Pakula's films have never been inclined to demand large-scale or
thematically complex music out of their composers. From
Klute to
Presumed Innocent, a Pakula effort is typically a high-quality
suspense story about corruption in the genres of law, journalism, and
politics. The thriller
The Pelican Brief falls into all of these
categories, with its story closely following John Grisham's best-selling
novel of the same name. Julia Roberts is a law student with a sharp mind and
an inquisitive nature, and her theory about a conspiracy behind the deaths
of two Supreme Court justices inks her name on the perpetrators' hit list.
She teams with Denzel Washington who, as a reporter, dodges the same
assassination attempts on their lives in an effort to get the truth
revealed. With a seemingly snug fit between Grisham and Pakula in place, the
duties of the composer would fall upon James Horner, whose popularity was
nearing its height in the industry even though he was still branching out
into projects that didn't fall into his normal realm of operation. With many
similarities in construct,
The Pelican Brief would be the same score
for James Horner that
Presumed Innocent was a few years earlier for
John Williams. Both introverted, tense, piano-dominated works, Horner's
ability to create the same sophistication of atmosphere would fall far short
of Williams' ability to do the same. Thus, while
Presumed Innocent
and
The Pelican Brief essentially use the same spirit of underscore
(despite a more chase-oriented action tilt in the latter), Williams'
tackling of the job is leagues beyond Horner's music in quality and class.
Like his scores for the Tom Clancy/Jack Ryan films that debuted in the same
era of Horner's career (
Patriot Games and
Clear and Present
Danger),
The Pelican Brief is a largely underachieving and
uninspired score. Playing once again on ideas that Horner had already
established in other works, there is little worth mentioning about
The
Pelican Brief that defines it as a unique work.
Not all of Horner's minimalistic efforts are so dull as
The Pelican Brief; he has proven with
Thunderheart and
The
Spitfire Grill that some outstanding personality can be expressed in his
softer works. And while
The Pelican Brief has the same
character-centered focus as
Searching for Bobby Fischer and
The
Man Without a Face, it restrains its emotions to a far less dramatic
level. Before diving into the faults of the underscore for
The Pelican
Brief, it should be mentioned that the effort does offer two cues that
will likely appeal to fans of the scores mentioned above. The "Darby's
Theme" and "Airport Goodbye" cues present about eight minutes of fully
orchestral theme; not unique in its own characteristics, but built on a
similar, flowing-string structure. The former track is seemingly a concert
piece from the score since it was not used in the final cut of the film. The
latter cue may grace the end credits with thematic fluidity, but the rest of
the score in the film is an exercise in Horner's usual suspense tactics.
Although Horner's typical piano crashes during moments of cinematic distress
are nothing new, he takes them beyond simple crashing and uses then to
thrash the listener with their ferocious rumblings. All to often, a
pleasant, rambling piano motif or extended sequence of barely audible
strings is interrupted by one of these thrashes. Tapping percussion,
including a light snare in consistent rhythms, leads the score from one
non-descript suspense cue to the next. When matters of importance occur, the
crashing of chimes --in similar fashion to the piano-- will also raise many
memories for Horner collectors. Light clicking and high-toned electronic
choir over electric bass and tingling keyboard rhythms, such as those in
"Researching the Brief," would foreshadow
The Spitfire Grill. Such
music would make for a very consistent listening experience if not for the
crashing, staggering chase sequences, which plays tricks with you by
crashing every time the nervous Roberts looks over her shoulder at
something. There are few direct, lengthy quotations of music from Horner's
previous work, but a Horner collector will easily get the impression that
the composer was not even attempting to break new conceptual ground with
The Pelican Brief. A lengthy album extends the suffering; some
pressings of the now out-of-print album contained faulty laser engraving
that makes it difficult for various CD players to recognize the parameters
of each track. If Horner's music was any better, there'd be reason to worry
about this.
**
| Bias Check: | For James Horner reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 3.14 (in 90 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.33
(in 164,220 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
The insert includes information about both the composer and the director, but not the score or film.
