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FILMTRACKS.COM
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of Mission: Impossible (Danny Elfman)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you specifically recall Danny Elfman's highly
rhythmic, starkly toned, and percussive dissonance in the film itself
and can forgive its diminished thematic accessibility.
Avoid it... if you expect either significant use of Lalo Schifrin's original main theme for the television show or a similar expression of cool, jazzy style in Elfman's surprisingly prickly and unpleasant score.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Mission: Impossible: (Danny Elfman) In the 1996
film that confirmed Tom Cruise as an international action star, director
Brian De Palma revised the classic "Mission: Impossible" television
series and produced a hit on screen that would spawn countless sequels
as Cruise sought to indefinitely defy his age. In the world of
techno-gadgets, the computer had revolutionized the world of espionage,
and the 1990's were the time to take advantage of that excitement in De
Palma fashion. The lives of super-agents and double-agents benefited
well from the director's sense of style-over-story, though despite the
film's spectacular visual elements, the somewhat incomprehensible
narrative caused many movie-goers to scratch their heads. The deaths of
so many intriguing, unrealized characters is a nagging issue for this
original Mission: Impossible entry, the sour tone of the movie a
mood-buster for some. The labyrinth of character relations, sub-plots,
and technological ideas do thankfully culminate in sensational chase
sequences that save the film, however. The emphasis on style over
substance in the plot is one that would seemingly have translated easily
into the musical underscore for the film, but it didn't work as
intended. Originally writing and recording a score for Mission:
Impossible was Alan Silvestri, whose action music is typically
strong; his work for this particular project unfortunately turned out to
be underwhelming to say the least, with some having said at the time
that it was among the composer's most underachieving and mundane works.
There is some indication that Silvestri recycled the style of this
material for his Eraser score. With Silvestri's music rejected,
regular Tim Burton collaborator Danny Elfman took his first crack at a
full-fledged summer blockbuster score outside the darkness of Burton's
cover. His replacement score for Mission: Impossible reflects a
general turn in the direction of his own maturing style, with 1994's
Black Beauty serving as the final classically beautiful piece of
his early career and 1995 yielding the more electronically unpredictable
and uniquely stylistic To Die For and Dead Presidents. For
listeners hanging their hats on Elfman's sense of lyricism, Mission:
Impossible confirmed that the composer was headed for less easily
accessible music as a career choice, at least for a few years.
It's no surprise that the rather elusive, prickly, rhythmically ambient music that Elfman produced for Mission: Impossible was originally considered a significant disappointment to collectors of his work. The degree to which those listeners still consider the Mission: Impossible score to be substandard depends on their opinion of the direction that Elfman's career continued to take into the late 1990's. A restrained, dissonant, unfriendly, and rhythmic work, Mission: Impossible dwells on significant use of inglorious percussion, light bass, dense orchestral accompaniment, and relatively little thematic development. The application of bongo drums and a myriad of other percussive elements is both sparsely recorded and emotionally inaccessible, creating a vaguely retro ambience but not extending any true sense of coolness to the genre. The one standout cue ironically features the strongest connection to the composer's previous works; for the crucial "Betrayal" sequence at the heart of the film, Elfman sets a melancholy choir over a stark electric bass rhythm for a nearly gothic interlude amongst all his percussive meanderings. While it may not be an absolutely crucial cue for Elfman collectors to have (it is included on the second "Music for a Darkened Theatre" compilation album), "Betrayal" is a remarkable return to the mysterious music of Batman's roots and stands out as a very awkward departure in Mission: Impossible. Elfman seems to have been undecided (or perhaps under conflicting orders) regarding the use of his own thematic development versus Lalo Schifrin's highly recognizable material from the original television series. In the end, the main Schifrin theme receives two full, stylish performances in the score, first at the outset and later during "Langley," the latter allowing Elfman to extend the idea a bit. A brief dash of the theme in "Zoom B" was toned back for the final cut in the picture. The theme's underlying rhythm sometimes emerges, as in "Red Handed," but it disappears for most of the remainder of the score. In attempting to adapt the Schifrin theme with more pizzazz than Silvestri's bombastic recording had done, Elfman does achieve the right amount of snazziness in the theme, even if he then blatantly changes the mood for the remainder of the score. For a concept made so memorable by a jazzy title theme, Elfman (and, to a lesser extent, Hans Zimmer and his horde of ghostwriters in the first sequel score) seem to have lost the character of the concept even if the movies did make an effort to maintain better connections to those roots. On the upside, Elfman's adaptation of Schifrin's "plot" subtheme for the IMF organization from the television series is fairly substantial, a melody so recognizable that it dominates the score's identity when utilized. The composer's own thematic ideas are present, but they become lost in the largely unfocused plethora of rhythmic underscore. Elfman devises themes for Ethan Hunt, the IMF, and the love interest in Mission: Impossible, but never does he enunciate these ideas with enough clarity to make them memorable. The Hunt theme, essentially two pairs of descending notes, is applied well conceptually throughout the score but again does not define itself well enough in the performances to make it effective. The new IMF theme is overwhelmed by Schifrin's "plot" theme and is irrelevant. The destitute love theme is often tortured by necessity, culminating in "Love Theme?" without any of its progressions truly taking hold. Elfman's foreshadowing and development of the Hunt and love themes is adept but pointless, as neither excels enough as an identity to suffice outside of the mere tone of their performances. Conversely, a rising four-note progression of brutal brass character for the closing train sequence is a motif that does function well. On the whole, the most curious aspect of Elfman's score is exactly the lack of coolness throughout the work; for a De Palma film especially, which relies on style over substance, Elfman's score is a largely dull and functional piece. If you think of the wildly snazzy sections of Ennio Morricone's work for De Palma's The Untouchables, you get a better notion of what Elfman's score could have used to some extent. Instead, the Mission: Impossible score heard apart from the film is clunky, lifeless, and muted in its recording and suspect in its overly dry mixing quality. With bland action music and style-deprived suspense and mystery cues, this score is a surprisingly strange and disappointing miss for Elfman. On album, a song compilation for the summer blockbuster initially dominated, the score-only option delayed for months after the film's debut. In 2019, La-La Land Records offered that presentation as well as the original film arrangement of the music that includes several newly released cues. The differences between the film and original album mixes and arrangements are not significant enough to merit much interest alone, though the expanded presentation does add a few notable interpolations of Schifrin's main theme in "Langely" and the alternate version of "Zoom B." Otherwise, the additional Elfman material newly heard on the 2019 product is much like the score itself: unsettled, indecisive, and unpleasant. **
TRACK LISTINGS:
1996 Polygram Album:
Total Time: 52:28
* Contains "Theme From Mission: Impossible" by Lalo Schifrin 2019 La-La Land Album: Total Time: 128:10
* Previously unreleased ** Contains previously unreleased material *** Contains "Theme From Mission: Impossible" by Lalo Schifrin # Contains "The Plot" by Lalo Schifrin
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert of the 1996 Polygram album includes no extra information about the score or film.
That of the 2019 La-La Land album contains extensive notes about both.
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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 Mission: Impossible are Copyright © 1996, 2019, Polygram Classics, La-La Land Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 9/24/96 and last updated 2/19/21. |
