Cars are flipping, people are moving, shouting and shooting mainly in slow-motion shots and the editing is as hectic as in an MTV-spot on steroids. By now it should be clear that we are dealing with a Jerry Bruckheimer produced Michael Bay movie, so you either love or hate this particular visual style. The Rock from 1996 was Bruckheimer's then biggest success (by now, Pirates of the Caribbean should have that position) and he literally defined the word blockbuster together with his former partner Don Simpson who passed away during the making of The Rock. The plot in any Bruckheimer/Bay film, including The Rock, mainly serves as an excuse to start a brainless action rampage. Here, we have the bitter general Hummel who demands justice from the government for Spec Ops Marines who died during secret missions. Too bad nobody listens to his demands, so he starts a little patriot-act by stealing some really terrible VX-gas rockets and installing them on the famous prison island Alcatraz. The only two people who can stop Hummel from killing millions of people in San Francisco are former Alcatraz prisoner John Mason and FBI's chemical weapons specialist Stanley Godspeed. The rest are cars flipping, people moving, shouting and shooting in slow-motion shots and an editing as hectic as an MTV-spot on steroids.

The score:

The situation of the music in a Jerry Bruckheimer film is comparable to any other aspect of a Jerry Bruckheimer film: You either love it or hate it. For the record: I used to like it up to a certain point where you notice that it's really just terribly exchangeable and actually constructed in a really cheap and simple way. The Bruckheimer-score-formula (also commonly known as the "Don't do that Goldsmith-shit again!"-formula) developed by Hans Zimmer's own company Remote Control (formerly known as Media Ventures) is basically always the same. You have a couple of really good thematic ideas that are usually performed by a very raw, often electronically enlarged orchestral base (at least I suspect there are bits of a real orchestra because an orchestrator is credited in the booklet). These bits and pieces are then connected by a carpet of pop-electronics where everything the sample library contains is thrown in to make it as noisy as possible and to hide the all too obvious weaknesses of a way too thin orchestral basis. If one would cancel out all the electronics that overkill this score we would be left alone with an extremely uninteresting and boring orchestral fundament apart from a couple of neat melodic ideas. In The Rock, this formula actually works to a certain degree even within the film and the music on CD benefits from a clever arrangement that further helps to hide it's obvious problems.

The album begins with "Hummell Gets The Rockets" (the name 'Hummel' is actually spelled wrong in the track listing) which is really a combination of the opening track and the actual cue for the stealing of the rockets. It's therefore quite long at over 6 minutes but still represents the best cues of the album. In fact, you can listen to this one cue and have heard all that's important in this score. It starts with a quasi-militaristic hymn that builds from quiet horns to an emotionally aching solo trumpet backed up by male choir swelling with pathos while Hummel is introduced. Hummel's pain and broken patriotism when he recapitulates his soldiers not getting the honour they deserve is surprisingly well-captured by this piece. Suddenly, the setting changes and so does the score. As Hummel is stealing the gas rockets from a military depot, the action theme for Hummel's mutiny gang and the action theme for The Rock are introduced in the rest of the sequence which is pounding it's course with heavy electronic banging for over 4 minutes though in a much more enjoyable fashion than the later cues do.

"Rock House Jail" starts screaming an extra-loud statement of The Rock action theme at the listener before continuing the Hummel action material heard before as the general is setting up his 'base' on Alcatraz. A solo trumpet is reprising the opening titles with little variation as Hummel gives a speech to his men. The other half of the lengthy 10-minutes track comes from a scene that actually follows much later in the film. Here, the music strikes with a full statement of the main theme, full of pathos and overly patriotic, for the scene when the Navy Seals are taking off to infiltrate Alcatraz, often interrupted by more banging and crashing electronics. A lot of the material in this cue is altering from quite enjoyable to really nerving but it's simplicity will always be clubbing you right on the head. A soft and gentle cue called "Jade" might suggest that there is actually some further dramatic depth to be found and with it's pan flute it sounds indeed like coming from a completely different score, yet it is the theme for John Mason's daughter. However, this brief cue is gone as quickly as it came.

"In The Tunnels" is a juggernaut cue of over 8 minutes and nearly 6 of them are incredibly obsolete. Most of the stuff heard here is just hammering around without any particular goal except making as much noise as possible to compete with sound effects during the action-heavy tunnel scenes. Electronics and E-guitars are getting their fair share in this cue. Only the beginning offers some entertaining playing-around with some of the film's themes. "Mason's Walk - First Launch" brings some of the better moments with Mason's theme and the theme for Jade receiving entertaining major statements already near the beginning which kind of makes it a winner. More heavy pathos with male choir followed by hectic synthetic action music is heard near the end and accompanies the launch sequence of one of the gas rockets. The entire music from the final fight is heard in "Rocket Away", the longest and probably most tiresome cue of the CD. It seems like the music just becomes more and more techno-styled as it is approaching the end of the disc, however there is still a good moment to be heard which is a slow-building rendition of the main theme with heavy male choir for the overly dramatic green-smoke scene. "Fort Walton - Kansas" is actually the last score track to be heard in the film and brings an uplifting holiday mood for guitar. The album itself isn't quite over yet because there is still "The Chase" to be heard. However, apart from one or two action-statements of Mason's Theme there isn't really anything else except endless drum loops and banging percussion - nothing you haven't heard already in the cues before.  

 

RATING:

Score as heard in the film: 51%

Score as heard on CD: 61%

TOTAL: 56%

 

The presentation:

As far as material is concerned, the original album hardly leaves anything to be desired. Every key moment of the score is there and the running time is more than generous at one hour. The sound quality is good though sometimes you can't help but wish for a slightly lower mixing volume because everything is really moving at the edge of distortion. It is mainly the sequencing that can be annoying because there are only 8 tracks and three of them are already 10 minutes long (one of them even 14 minutes). Really annoying especially if you only want to listen to a particular single moment in the score but have to fast forward over 10 minutes into a 14 minutes monster cue in order to get there. The booklet contains numerous colour pictures from the film and very detailed scoring credits (and you would be surprised to find out who else helped out in this score). Due to various re-pressings over the years the original album is still readily available at low prices.

Presentation by the Label: 60%

 

Summary:

The Rock and it's score is a typical Bruckheimer/Bay/Remote Control affair but from a time when the approach was still somewhat fresh and promising in it's own right. Today, it is over-exaggerated, stereotyped and mostly out of place in the films itself. Not so with The Rock. Loud synthesizer escapades, screaming e-guitars and overly patriotic hymns consisting of solo trumpet with kitschy male choir are exactly what Bay's action-marathon was calling for and the music actually contains a couple of cool melodic ideas. The director and producer probably would not have known what to do with a real orchestral action score anyways. On album, the music leaves some of it's weaknesses behind and actually manages to be a coherent listening experience due to a clever sequencing, albeit it suffers from some terribly overlong tracks. Remote Control music like The Rock has already found it's target audience a long time ago and the CD is a must-have release for all of them. Only if you value your film music with deep and distinguishable orchestrations that doesn't need to conceal it's simplicity with an electronic rampage, you should better stay as far away from this CD as possible because there is not enough aspirin on this earth to deal with the super-headache the music will give you.

Review by Andreas Creutzburg

 

                   Tracklisting:

01. Hummell Gets The Rockets (06:25)
02. Rock House Jail (10:12)
03. Jade (02:01)
04. In The Tunnels (08:40)
05. Mason's Walk / First Launch (09:34)
06. Rocket Away (14:25)
07. Fort Walton, Kansas (01:37)
08. The Chase (07:35)