Surprisingly, Enemy at the Gates is James Horner’s first
entry in scoring a World War II film. I definitely thought he would’ve
scored one before now. After all, even Hans Zimmer has tackled this genre
to say nothing of John Williams or Jerry Goldsmith. With this “oversight”
now rectified, how does it compare to the scores of those aforementioned
composers? Well, all the Horner detractors are going to have another field
day with this, since Horner still quotes from himself (I think we can all
safely agree that we will never see the day when that will stop), but
Horner fans will be delighted to know that this is one of his more
original works with only occasional themes and sequences that remind us of
his previous scores.
The music is quite dark and depressing in tone (of course, so was
the whole Russian Front campaign) and this may be a turn off for some,
although I never felt that the tone got so dark that it became too
depressing. Still, a more heroic theme now and then would’ve really
helped to make it more enjoyable to listen. Horner thankfully utilizes a
full chorus here (it should be a crime to make ANY film about the Russians
and not include a chorus somewhere...) and while it generally follows the
same tone as the rest of the score, there are moments where they provide
the much-appreciated uplifting music.
As far as Horner’s repeats
go, there are a few moments from Krull in
here that are very interesting, simply because I get a kick out of hearing
how different moments from older scores have been matured in the
orchestrations over the years. In
addition there is the four-note enemy motif (for the
Germans of course) which has been quite a Horner
staple since its first appearance in Willow.
It got quite a lot of play time more recently in The Mask of Zorro,
but here it really takes the cake. It comes up so much that it gets rather
annoying after a while. After hearing that wonderful German theme in Medal
of Honor, I was hoping that Horner could've done something just as
good. In addition, some (including myself) have noticed the
interesting similarity between one of the themes in this score and the
main theme from John Williams score to Schindler's
List. Now, I know that sometimes it is quite unintentional, there
are after all a limited combination of notes and how they can be arranged.
Still, Horner does have the reputation, but I'm willing to hold off any
sort of a position as to whether this is an actual rip-off or not until
I've heard more on the subject.
Like many of Horner’s newer releases, some of the tracks are
quite long (the first one is over 15 minutes!). It can a little rough to
try to wade through at times if you’re looking for a specific moment in
the score, but otherwise it’s not too bad. Horner fans will probably be
pleased, but the dark tone of the score could be a turn-off for some. In
addition to this score, I’m sure a lot of people are breathlessly
awaiting Hans Zimmer’s next entry into the World War II genre with Pearl
Harbor. In the meantime however, if you’re looking for something of
that nature, Horner should satisfy you quite nicely. ****
