| The Musketeer |
| Composed by David Arnold |
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Orchestrated and Conducted by Nicholas Dodd Produced by David Arnold Release Date: 2001 |
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| After The World is Not Enough, David Arnold seemed to go into hibernation. While there was talk of him scoring The Patriot, the project ultimately fell into the capable hands of John Williams. While he did score two films for John Singleton (Shaft and Baby Boy) neither of those films received a proper score release. Both films marked a total stylistic departure for Arnold, and while Shaft was a good score, I still yearned to hear him return to the bombastic style of Independence Day. Well, imagine my surprise when I see the trailer for The Musketeer and find out that David Arnold was the composer. I was really excited by this and could not wait to get my hands on the CD. Well, now that it's finally here, is it really the return to the bombastic roots that I, and many fans, were waiting for? Well, it is definitely a return to the style of Stargate and Independence Day, but it does stumble in a few places. The CD starts off immediately with the Main Title, and this is one of the problems of the score. The theme is good, but not as grand or magnificent as we have come to expect. It's almost as if all the work on other scores that already had primary themes (i.e. the two James Bond films and Shaft) has caused Arnold to grow a bit rusty in his theme writing abilities. It's not that the main theme is not serviceable or that Arnold does it incorporate it in various ways throughout the score. Actually it is quite the contrary. However, it is still rather bland compared to the themes found in other scores of this nature. This is especially surprising considering what great themes he has composed for previous projects. Hopefully, this is just a case of Arnold being a little rusty from not composing a score of this nature in over three years. Thankfully, there are numerous sub-themes in the score, and while they are never developed to their full potential (especially the love theme), they are quite enjoyable. Since the film boasts of impressive fight chorography, it should come as no surprise that this is primarily an action score. There are a lot of quieter moments and I would actually say that it has less action cues than, say, The Mummy Returns. That brings up the second problem with this score. While the opening action cues are quite good (with tracks three and five being the primary standouts), the music stumbles in the second half. While the opening third of the disc boasts some great original stuff from Arnold, the latter portion ends up with cues containing a lot of musical ideas from such scores as Independence Day and Tomorrow Never Dies. Where the opening action sequences contain a lot of theme building, the later cues seem to abandon it entirely. It is almost like Arnold just grew tired of having to write so many action cues by the end of the film that he just through in whatever he could. This is highly disappointing since the the opening action cues are so incredible. The more refrained "character-building" moments also suffer as well since Arnold never really seems to go anywhere with them and he doesn't use the opportunity to build any of his themes save for a handful of instances. On the other hand, this score does have a John Barry influence to it and it is really nice to see Arnold extending this style over and beyond James Bond. None of the Barry influences I detected were from Bond, but rather in a style reminiscent of Barry's other works, especially the more romantic-style scores. I really enjoyed these moments, but otherwise the softer underscore is lackluster. So far, all I've done is give the cons of this score, but I don't want to leave the impression that David Arnold has really slipped with this one. Despite its shortcomings, I can't seem to stop popping this CD in my player and I've found myself humming portions of the score as well. Despite the lackluster second half, this is still an enjoyable score for fans of swashbuckling action/adventure score such as Cutthroat Island and The Mummy Returns. If you're willing to give it a chance, you'll probably find that it is a solid score that manages to entertain on a variety of levels. And hopefully, this marks the return of Arnold to bigger and better things. ***1/2 |
| Track Listing - Total Running Time: 49:39 | |
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