Without really good synthesizers and tasked with generating 80 minutes of music from his home, Elfman considered the assignment a worthy but laborious challenge. With only a minimal use of sequencers to assist in generating the layers in his recording, the composer was left attempting to perform on keyboards that he had never considered his strongest capability. His approach ultimately met the minimum standards for the film but was strongly influenced by others in the arena at the time, making this music mostly a "don't screw it up" kind of result from a composer learning on the job. With only the synthesizers providing all the instrumentation of Wisdom, he employs emulations of common wet marimba tones, bass thumps, drum kit, and fake wind and high brass that were typical to the era. The electric guitar portions of the score are less heralded because they do not appear on the score's longstanding album release. Stylistically, Elfman clearly sought guidance from the preceding works of Harold Faltermeyer, James Horner, and Tangerine Dream, with different sections of his score borrowing elements of each. From Faltermeyer, it's the Beverly Hills Cop bass keyboarding. From Horner, it's the brash Commando percussion. From Tangerine Dream, it's the more ambient atmospheres. Those styles are not bad in and of themselves, but their renderings sometimes were, and how Elfman chooses to apply them is not effective. Sadly, Wisdom is a mechanically perfunctory and totally lifeless score, with no substantive synchronization points or meter changes within cues. There are hints of Elfman's own, early 1980's style in the obnoxious riff at the outset of "The Mirror." The action material is particularly grating, the slapping drums and marimba effects of Horner origins distracting in "The Big Heist." Some cues consist of almost entirely percussion-only rhythm-setters, such as "The Face Off" and "Karen Bites the Bullet." Slurring electric guitar techniques really emerge in "Heist Part Two." Dissonance is relatively rare but factors late in "Close Call in Albuquerque" and "The Shootout."

Elfman's lone main theme for Wisdom is based on the structures of the "Home Again" song performed by Oingo Boingo for the end credits. It's a truly weird, halting, uncertain, and unengaging theme, with very little propulsion to it. It has several underlying riffs established most extensively in "Change of Life." The melody forms its own cyclical riff on xylophone effects at 1:24 into that cue as well, but the highest lines in "Change of Life" aren't really aligned with the theme. Introduced fully at 0:18 into "The Mirror" and meandering through the rest of the cue, the main theme dabbles on top of the jungle-appropriate rhythmic loops of "The Passion of Wisdom," becomes lazy in the background under marimba rhythms in "Job Search," and is accelerated with a bit of optimism in "Close Call in Albuquerque." It's keyboarded with more contemporary style in "Trouble" and joined by the primary riff as an interlude, but that more palatable sound is boiled down further in the contemplative and accessible "Wisdom Phone Home." It becomes very slow but slightly more tonal on those keyboards during "In the Desert" as well. The lead riff guides atmospheric choral haze in "Finale" before the theme joins on trumpet shades. Elfman elongates and smoothens the theme into a harder rock approach in "Main Titles" as something of a diversion. Finally, the main theme is both the introductory riff and main vocalized core of the "Home Again" song for the credits, and because the melody is so awkwardly structured, it's difficult for Elfman to perform with lyrics and, sadly, yields a song that is just not very good. In the end, Wisdom basically accomplishes what it needed to, but it's neither interesting nor unique. The composer thrives upon creativity, and this work is so derivative of others in the industry at the time that it's almost completely devoid of the charm and appeal of even Elfman's most challenging scores of the mid-1980's. The score was released on identical CD and LP record options in 1988 by Varèse Sarabande, and it was never expanded upon since. There is a significant amount of music missing from that product, including the guitar portions of character significance in the context of the story, but it's doubtful that more of the remainder will improve the listening experience.  **   @Amazon.com: CD or Download