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FILMTRACKS.COM
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of Backdraft (Hans Zimmer)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you own several masculine scores from later in Hans
Zimmer's career and seek his first, highly successful and enjoyable
large-scale merging of an orchestra and choir with his electronics for
beefy bravado.
Avoid it... if no variation on Zimmer's militaristic tones and simplistic themes will fit with your preference for subtlety and delicacy, this work slapping you across the face with unrestrained heroism.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Backdraft: (Hans Zimmer) The forces of good and
evil were hard at work against each other in Backdraft, but not
in the ways you'd expect. Ron Howard's character story of firefighters
in Chicago's Chinatown had one of cinema's most spectacular
assets in its favor: the best portrayal of flames ever produced. In
fact, even many years later, no film has treated the personality of a
fire with such menacing dignity as Backdraft. So brilliant is its
realistic qualities on screen that audiences were willing, for the most
part, to forgive an absolutely terrible script by Gregory Widen to
witness them. The slow and predictable narrative of Backdraft
couldn't be salvaged by even an expert cast led by a few outstanding
conversational duels between Donald Sutherland and Robert DeNiro. The
reconciliatory side-stories of the brothers played by Kurt Russell and
William Baldwin are so wretched that you sit waiting for the next cut to
the maniacal Sutherland or, in his honor, another scene of arson to
feature the mesmerizing capturing of fire in camera. While Howard had
established a strong collaboration with composer James Horner at the
time, he had been impressed by Hans Zimmer's Black Rain, and
depending on what source you talk to, the director's high opinion of
that 1989 score was either a blessing or a bad omen. While some accounts
indicate that Howard wanted a different variation on the style of
Black Rain to provide a hard edge to Backdraft's overtly
masculine tones, Zimmer himself has indicated that to appease the
director, he ended up having to copy some of the earlier score almost
precisely for the fire scenes in particular. Either way, Zimmer was on
the verge of being fired from Backdraft because of the
miscommunication between them, and the production's music director had
to step in at last minute and help explain to Zimmer what Howard was
seeking in his approach. Inconvenient technical glitches didn't help,
either.
Zimmer and Howard eventually worked very closely on a cue-by-cue basis for Backdraft, with Zimmer in attendance on the set during the filming of live-blaze action. But the two men reportedly did not speak again until their reconciliation more than a decade later led to Zimmer's involvement in Howard's The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons. The composer had already been recognized with an Academy Award nomination by 1991, but Backdraft's score was a significant wake-up call to casual film score collectors. The thrilling role of Zimmer's music in Backdraft and on its powerful album helped launch him beyond the promise of Rain Man and Driving Miss Daisy into the top tier of composers where he would remain for decades. In interviews, Zimmer has stated that he's proud of the somewhat unorthodox method of writing and recording soft music for scenes of fiery destruction, and although that technique is used a few times, don't be fooled into thinking that Backdraft is anything less than Zimmer's bombast at its best. His bass-heavy, percussive score is loud enough to be heard over many of the stunning sound effects mixed throughout the film. Prominent composers of the era such as Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner had already experimented with a combination of orchestral players, choir, and electronics in their film scores, but never with the resounding power that Zimmer introduced with Backdraft. He would later elaborate upon this style in Crimson Tide and many others, of course, but Backdraft serves as the origin point for many of the underlying sounds the composer was later best known for. Between the dominant snare drum rhythms, the light female chorus, and Zimmer's robust and simplistic themes, the Backdraft score, despite whatever difficulty it may have had in the conception stage, is exactly what Zimmer and Howard wanted it to be: an ode to firemen. It bypasses Howard's Irish tilt that defines some source usage on screen to focus on the characters and action only. For Zimmer, the opportunity to work with anywhere from 95 to 120 orchestral players, a chorus, and his library of synthesized samples led to the difficult task of combining all three without drowning any one of them out. Many film score collectors credit master orchestrator and conductor Shirley Walker for helping to guide the score's consistently intelligent balance between the organic and synthetic, and Zimmer himself isn't shy about lauding her immense talents and their assistance to this score. (Walker was also known for contributing considerable positive input to Danny Elfman's Batman just before, her knack for guiding inexperienced composers into large-scale orchestral assignments proven at the top levels of the industry.) Regardless of the extent of Zimmer's reliance upon Walker, there's a fresh ambience to Backdraft that went missing from the action scores that he only co-wrote or produced later in his career. Despite the fact that much of Backdraft utilizes songs, source music, or no music at all, there is no doubt that Zimmer's contribution is an extremely successful match for the topic. A few of the conversational cues seem overplayed by the music's mix, some scenes' cues suddenly engaging at too high a volume for the characters' speech. The cuts between the romantic scene for the leads atop a fire truck and an impending fire response is truly awkward, but Zimmer still has every right to be proud of the achievement overall. His favorite cue accompanies the funeral procession at the end of the film, and it is an emotionally charged and elegant piece with bold brass, percussion, and choir that indeed resides as one of the best single cues in his career. Interestingly, some of the more melodic moments of Backdraft would be further explored in The Lion King, especially in the combination of heart-breakingly lovely strings, solo woodwinds, and light choir expressed during the poignant death sequence heard at the end of "Final Fire/Who's Your Brother?" ("You Go, We Go" on the original album). The more masculine motifs defining action scenes later found comfortable homes in The Peacemaker and beyond. Two main themes exist in the score for Backdraft, and Zimmer intentionally states them separately until the resolution at the story's conclusion. Leading the work is the propulsive fanfare for the noble firefighting concept, a clear inspiration for Mark Mancina's later Speed and also famously used as the theme for the TV cooking show "Iron Chef." A more lyrical secondary idea also exists for the two brothers and their tangential relationships. By the end of the score, as Baldwin's character assumes the role as the family's veteran on the force, the latter theme is supplied as a choral interlude to the snare-ripping firefighting theme, essentially integrating them into one construct. The popular firefighter theme is best remembered for its heavy anchoring of the fire truck travelling sequences at the start and end of the score, lending a romantic brass identity in "Backdraft Main Titles" ("Fighting 17th") that Zimmer has long identified as perhaps the only truly heroic theme of his career. In this one instance, the cue explores a broader set of upbeat secondary lines to the idea in two minutes of development, perhaps due to the composer still feeling out the melody in process or perhaps as a specific alternate for the brothers' father. That firefighter theme occupies the score in several lighter guises, eventually translating into an idea of romance in "Show Me Your Firetruck" ("Brothers"). Zimmer's common synthetic keyboarding at the time is more comfortable, however, with the brothers' theme, as heard at the ends of "The Real Thing" and "The Ex is Back?" Several secondary themes occupy Backdraft, none as emotive as Zimmer's death and injury motif. Powerfully exhibited upon the death of the father in "Backdraft Main Titles" ("Fighting 17th"), this motif is often the domain of a solo trumpet, Zimmer's ultimate tribute to heroism that carried over to Crimson Tide and The Rock but conveying here a level of raw emotion rarely touched upon by Zimmer in the following years. This idea also returns in "Tim Burns" and "Who's Your Brother?" ("Burn It All"), and the melancholy trumpet is sometimes lent to the two main themes, as in "Save My Baby" and "You Win." Zimmer's recurring action motif is a true foreshadowing of masculine pounding to come, but it makes a somewhat strange entrance on his trademark 1980's synths and marimba effects in "Burnt Out Beamer." It receives its due chopped string formation after a heroic anthem that comes together in "Mannequin Fire" and eventually thrives in "Final Fire." Those two massive action sequences for the set firefighting scenes offered Zimmer the chance to explore several secondary lines of action that ramble through both cues, including a common, slower, pulsing passage for strings, drums, synths, and choir that drives the melodrama through the roof. Ancillary to this material is a rolling ascent and descent motif for the fire itself that opens "The Real Thing" on low strings and threatens in a few other cues as the fire is referred to as an "animal." The suspense element in this score is somewhat underdeveloped, the synthetics not always lending effective power to the film's mix. Perhaps the most intriguing cue attempting this technique is "Who Doesn't Love Fire?" Generally, though, the heavy, electronically-driven portions of the score are more interesting than the stock, more brazenly synthesized orchestra hits that would come later in Zimmer's preferred methods. While never resorting to a harsh electric guitar, Zimmer uses abrasive and grinding electronics during scenes glorifying the fires. The balance in tone here seems to be more accomplished than in most of his subsequent works, perhaps a stroke of beginner's luck or owing, perhaps, to an editor's mixing talents. Still, in the action motif's performance early in "Final Fire" ("Burn It All," a cue used in several trailers for other films at the time), the rambling keyboarding does clearly emulate Black Rain. That score tends to bleed through the most in the secondary action material Zimmer was instructed to make hyper-emotional by Howard, led by the aforementioned pulsating choral passages. There's a reason this cue is almost identical to the end of "Charlie Loses His Head" on the commercial Black Rain album (more accurately titled "Outburst of Rage" on that score's bootlegs); Howard used that cue as a temp track over his trial footage of dramatic fire behavior for this film and fell in love with it. Zimmer was inclined to take the score in a fresh instrumental direction, and he still did, especially with the utilization of an array of sound effects early, including the tingling electrical sound of a burning circuit. Several of the conversational or lightly suspenseful cues in Backdraft rely upon that kind of creative ambience to carry what is otherwise mundane material. Underachieving is "What's This Job All About?" ("The Arsonist's Waltz"), with a rhythm that barely qualifies as a waltz and a tone that neither takes advantage of the explosiveness of the crime nor the mystery of its perpetrator in the story. Also struggling at times is the keyboarding of the brothers' theme in emerging from dreary environments. When the film's tensions inevitably rise, though, the outward instrumental creativity does return. Percussion is critical to this score, and its mix varies substantially between the original film version and the longstanding album alternative. The clanging of an ax is imitated by chimes, inserted at certain points to help maintain action rhythms. The same chimes, among other metallic strikes, underline several heroic deeds late in the film. For the militaristic aspect of the story, Zimmer emphasizes the most important instrument of them all: the snare drum. Fans will have a hard time remembering a score so dominated by one percussive instrument, but the snare is a perfect representation of the fire truck and the hailing of emergencies throughout the film. It, along with various medium-range drums (real or on the pads, it doesn't really matter), create the memorable ambience of a giant pinball machine, adding excitement while also yielding a sense of urgency, duty, and battle that the concept relies upon. All of these neat effects are highlights of the score's distinct mix apart of the film, though the album situation for Backdraft was long a major frustration for fans. The original Milan product of 1991 was mixed by legendary Beatles producer George Martin at Zimmer's request and the blessing of the filmmakers, and he gave the score a strikingly different balance that is noticeably different from the film's mix. Generally, his approach to the score reduced the presence of the electronics while boosting the choir and especially the percussion. For the funeral procession and final call to action cues at the end of the film ("Funeral" and "Hard Lesson to Learn"), Martin really cranked up the snare drum, accentuating the pinball machine effect for better or worse. An attractive "Ron Howard Passions and Achievements" retrospective compilation album from 1997, also released by Milan and remaining in print for decades to follow, contains an arguably superior mix of those properly merged final two cues, with better balanced percussion and choir presented in an extended suite format that is really a lovely 6-minute overview of the score and possible substitute for the original soundtrack album at the time. Some creative editing was done on that compilation cue, leading to an awkward volume change in the last sequence of the suite at about 4:00, but listeners were treated to an even more vibrant percussive role that clearly defines the intent that Zimmer had when preparing the music for the film. The original Milan album also had badly mislabeled tracks, less-then-stellar sound quality, and a presentation of cues out of film order. (The two closing cues of the film as just mentioned were labeled as "Fahrenheit 451" and "Show Me Your Firetruck.") In the action passages, a dull mix causes the oft droning bass elements to overwhelm some of the trickier and more interesting high range percussion. Aside from the merely average Bruce Hornsby songs at the start and end of the product, about 30 minutes of Zimmer's score was provided in the composer's standard, lengthy suite format. In 2005, Milan revisited the album and pressed a re-issue that unfortunately solved none of the original product's problems and arguably made them worse. The selling points of the 2005 album were a remastering of the score and the inclusion of a 9-minute Zimmer interview about the music conducted in retrospect. The interview is fine, and it illuminated some of the Black Rain issues that specifically plagued Backdraft. But the remastering, while it does better emphasize some of the treble elements that got swallowed up by the bass in the previous presentation, has a terrible time managing gain levels. The volume is cranked up so high at times that audible distortion is heard repeatedly in the second half of the score. It actually becomes embarrassing in "Burn It All." The clarinet solo near the end of "You Go, We Go" (whether real or Zimmer's remarkable Diving Miss Daisy incarnation) is downright nasal because of this frustrating soundscape. In the process of toning back the bass in "Fahrenheit 451," a certain amount of tape hiss effect is heard, too, causing the entire piece to consequently sound tinny. Even more disappointing about the 2005 Milan reissue was the absence of the original film version of the "Fahrenheit 451" and "Show Me Your Firetruck" combination of closing cues already available on the 1997 "Ron Howard Passions and Achievements" compilation, likely the result of a licensing complication. (Re-issues often don't allow for fiscally viable expansion of the music by even rights-owners). Listeners already in possession of the original 1991 album and/or the 1997 Howard compilation with Zimmer's supposedly preferred mix of those highlights had no reason to flock to the surprisingly disappointing 2005 re-issue. The same can't be said of Intrada Records' 2024 full expansion of the score, though, which finally provides the film version of the score's mix largely intact and with sensible track titles. More importantly, the product offered both the film's mix of the score and a cleaned-up version of George Martin's alternative, with an extra alternate mix of "Backdraft Main Titles" that highlights the electronics' depth to a greater degree. Listeners still scratching their heads in bewilderment over Milan's presentation will find some peace in Intrada's expansion, though the product is short on alternate takes and mixes, and the 1997 compilation edit remains missing. Neither of the Hornsby songs nor any of the other multitudes of source placements appears on this product. Be prepared to encounter several very short cues on the expansion, a circumstance that Zimmer himself loathed but was made necessary in this case by the film's tendency to drop a sudden, brief piece of score into the narrative without much context. The full presentation of the music reveals just how wise the condensing of material truly was for the 30-minute alternative from Milan; while the narrative is better appreciated on the 2024 album for enthusiasts of the movie, it isn't the same nonstop thriller of a listening experience in its second half in its longer form. Some collectors may find the Intrada presentation of this score to be roughly as satisfying as the label's equivalent treatment of The Rock, as the approaches to both expansions are similar and don't provide any significant revelations. Still, in a bittersweet sense, Backdraft is a nostalgic trip back to the days when Zimmer was a refreshing deviation from the standard Hollywood sound, and in part because of his unfortunate rash of originality problems in the decades to follow, it remains a sentimental favorite. ****
TRACK LISTINGS:
1991 Milan Album:
Total Time: 42:54
2005 Milan Album: Total Time: 52:22
2024 Intrada Album: Total Time: 98:37
NOTES & QUOTES:
The inserts for the Milan albums contain extensive credits but no
extra information about the film or score. That of the 2024 Intrada album
contains details about both.
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1996-2024, Filmtracks Publications. All rights reserved.
The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from Backdraft are Copyright © 1991, 2005, 2024, BMG/Milan, Milan Records, Intrada Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 9/24/96 and last updated 8/14/24. |
