Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #902
Written 6/27/98, Revised 2/25/19
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Buy it... only if you are the most ambitious collector of James
Horner's work and wish to hear a starkly palatable main theme featuring
progressions of tragedy that foreshadowed John Ottman's later suspense
methods.
Avoid it... if Horner's sparse, mostly synthetic suspense music of
the 1980's and associated generic, low-key thriller techniques don't
hold your interest, for both aspects of that style are at work in this
bland, hapless effort.
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| Horner |
Unlawful Entry: (James Horner) An interesting
premise occupies Unlawful Entry, one that elevates the 1992 film
beyond its expected restraints in the cheap thriller category and
thrusts it into debates about social drama. A man and his wife, a
typical suburban couple consisting of Kurt Russell and Madeleine Stowe,
are set up in a false burglary attempt on their home and are tricked
into relying upon the assistance of a police officer to protect them.
The cop is a psycho with a nice good-guy look about him, however, and
Ray Liotta does his best to outperform his previous efforts in exactly
the same kind of role. As the corrupt officer works his way into this
couple's lives and eventually lands the husband in jail, viewers are
meant to fear for the innocently vulnerable wife, who not only fails to
see this train of passion steaming towards her, but even gets herself
into the "woman in creepy dark house by herself" kind of scenarios by
the end of film. Until that all-too-familiar end, the film is somewhat
intelligent, but the stereotypical climax is a disappointment for fans
of director Jonathan Kaplan, whose crowning achievement, The
Accused, and his other films tended to excel at perpetuating scenes
of fear and confusion. For a project that would seem a perfect fit for
the likes of composer Christopher Young, especially after Hider in
the House not long before, mainstream star James Horner instead took
the assignment. The year of 1992 was one that kept Horner away from the
large orchestral ensembles with which he had made his fame, with several
projects consisting totally of (or being dominated by) electronics. Very
much like Thunderheart, Unlawful Entry was built upon
Horner's keyboarding and four assistant musicians performing solo
instruments. Despite the ensemble of five performers, however, the array
of electronics is clearly at the heart of Unlawful Entry, a
grating edge that defies the sanctity of the home. The reason for this
sound may have been budgetary constraints, for there are parts of the
score that would clearly sound superior (as was the case with The
Name of the Rose) had an orchestra been employed for the
performance. Then again, there remains the likelihood that the
alienating style of the largely synthetic work was itself the desired
outcome. Either way, the result is a score that is generally considered
by Horner collectors to be, in a competition with Bopha! and
Jade, among his worst efforts of the 1990's, more miserable than
most of the composer's other synthetically oriented works.
Augmenting Horner's synthetic keyboarding in
Unlawful Entry is the regular pairing of a saxophone-like EWI
(electronic wind instrument) and a piano. It's not clear exactly how
much of the percussion is synthetic as well, though some of the metallic
elements do reverberate with a certain organic touch. The
instrumentation simply does not provide enough inspired ideas to warrant
enjoyment apart of the film, and its presence in context has the sound
of a stock B-rate product. The score can be divided into two sections: a
main theme that merits attention and the extremely bland underscore that
dominates between the opening and closing credits. The suspense portions
retain some basic characteristics from
Thunderheart and
Vibes, especially in the piano crashes from the former and the
bass-heavy droning from the latter. To dismiss much of
Unlawful
Entry as unpleasant would fail to recognize that even in its
unpleasantness, there is little technical intelligence in the
composition to maintain your interest. The sharp jabs of broken chords,
mainstays of the budget horror genre, get tiresome fast. Horner's shift
of his typical "danger motif" to low electronic strings for the villain
is marginally effective. The use of a police siren sound effect produced
by the synths in "Leon's Death" is about the only notable element. The
title theme, however, has a few intriguing characteristics. A piano sets
the stage with a truly John Carpenter-like horror rhythm. The theme
itself, performed by subdued EWI, is very elegant in construct, with
tragic chord progressions not normally heard from Horner. In the manner
in which Horner changes between major and minor keys, the theme has the
distinct sound of John Ottman's style from later in the decade, and
enthusiasts of the younger composer might find much enjoyment in its
inherent darkness. As such, the main theme for
Unlawful Entry
absolutely begs for a fully symphonic recording at some point, with bass
strings replacing the electronic bass, a real choir in place of the fake
one, and a real saxophone taking the melody. Horner collectors will have
to use their imaginations in the meantime, and fortunately for them, the
palatable theme occupies over seven minutes on album. But if you combine
the frustration of the work's underdeveloped instrumentation with the
constructs of the dull suspense portions and a short overall running
time, the score is still extremely disappointing. After the 1992 Intrada
Records product went out of print, La-La Land Records needlessly
expanded the hapless presentation in 2017. Avoid either option. There
was a reason why Intrada decided to sell off its version at 99 cents
apiece in 1998, the ultimate recognition of a failed product.
* @Amazon.com: CD or
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Bias Check:
For James Horner reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.15
(in 108 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.23
(in 203,515 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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