Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #1,427
Written 6/21/99, Revised 11/8/24
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Buy it... only if you're a sucker for stale and predictable
orchestral action music for an equally formulaic film.
Avoid it... if you seek any kind of uniquely redeeming element to
elevate this otherwise competent score beyond the rest of its tired
class.
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| Debney |
Sudden Death: (John Debney) No less than a dozen
films could trace their inspiration back to the original Die
Hard, including its sequels. It seems that every venue has been
taken over by terrorists, from battleships to trains, and in 1995, the
time came for a professional sports team stadium to be taken hostage. In
this case, it's the home of the Pittsburgh Penguins, and the setting is
game seven of the Stanley Cup Finals. The John McLane-style hero is
Jean-Claude Van Damme, accepting yet another demeaning role that allows
him to kick a fellow human being in the head, although Sudden
Death is so bad that he actually gets to thrash a woman in the
team's mascot outfit, not to mention suit up and play on the ice at one
point, too. Director Peter Hyams had a knack for exciting action and
chase sequences, and Sudden Death has its fair share of those,
including explosions and high-wire stunts at the stadium that will be
worth the admission price for some. But the screenplay's dialogue and
totally illogical leaps, along with a supporting cast that doesn't
really seem to care about any of the proceedings, relegated the project
to the depths of despair so treacherous that you didn't even see the
film on late night cable re-runs very often. Nothing about the film
suggests nuance, and unless you're a fan of Van Damme himself, Sudden
Death is a painfully dumb waste of a few hours. With almost everyone
involved with the picture seemingly on autopilot, it's no surprise that
composer John Debney provides a score that pushes all the right buttons
without really accomplishing anything spectacular itself. Debney was
just beginning to make a significant impact on the film scoring world in
1995, with his score for Cutthroat Island raising a flurry of
deserved interest. There was some excitement in the community that the
succeeding Sudden Death would give listeners another opportunity
to hear the composer's action skills. Unfortunately, there is about as
much inspiration in Debney's writing here as there is in Van Damme's
facial expressions. The composer completed many projects like this in
the following years, with his diligent, workmanship attitude providing
temp-happy sounds to nearly any kind of project. On the upside, this
first collaboration with Hyams led to a pair of superior scores for the
director's subsequent films in the 1990's, and at least he managed to
take the general sound from the percussive headaches of Timecop
and infuse some marginal Jerry Goldsmith mannerisms from earlier in
Hyams' career.
Perhaps
Sudden Death didn't deserve anything
more than this kind of basic orchestral accompaniment. Debney certainly
has offered far more unique ideas. The one thing this score has going
for it is that the composer avoids simply rehashing the temp tracks and
manages to write a score that sounds relatively fresh, despite all of
its individual elements pointing to tired structures from other action
scores. You might hear Debney collectors refer to
Sudden Death as
an exhibition of the composer in the same autopilot mode that Goldsmith
was in for similarly poor projects at the time. In
Sudden Death,
Debney's main theme is rather stale and limp, stated without much
emotional force throughout "Main Title" for Van Damme's backstory and
informing many later action cues. While this idea's interpolations into
the suspense or dramatic portions isn't that memorable, the composer
does use it frequently in opaque fragments during most of the action and
allows a few rousing moments of dramatic resolution for the idea. For
some listeners, the tonally appealing "Darren Sees Tyler," "Rooftop
Battle," and end of "Foss Eats Ice" ("Resolution"), which mirror the
sound of Basil Poledouris' work for similar formula films, may be enough
release for the theme. Instrumentally, the director asked for a specific
metallic tone to the chasing within the stadium. The piano's low ranges
represent the personality of the score, striking the ominous tones at
the outset of the story and providing thunderous contributions to the
action rhythms. A variety of light percussion and high-range metallic,
synthetic sounds present the predictable rhythmic base for "Finding the
Bombs" and a few other cues involving explosives. The mass of the score
is driven by stock action music of lesser positioning, often imitating
Goldsmith and Michael Kamen. For the larger chase sequences involving
the stadium as a whole, Debney cranks up the rhythms with a consistent
timpani and low-range synthetic pulsation, but he rarely unleashes a
satisfyingly prolonged, exciting moment of tonal interest. Simple
strikes, orchestra hits, horror slashes, and a rather poor imagination
with the brass cause most of the action material to meld into the
background. The project could really have used more dramatic pull from
its main theme, but Debney dutifully earned his paycheck by accompanying
the bland action scenes with appropriately generic action music. The
30-minute commercial album from Varèse Sarabande in 1995 contains
all the highlights, and the label's 2024 limited expansion to 64 minutes
becomes too redundant despite its better reflection of the narrative.
Especially on this longer presentation,
Sudden Death proves
itself basically competent but somewhat stale at every punch.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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Bias Check:
For John Debney reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.33
(in 56 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.1
(in 49,960 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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