Cutthroat Island - Original Soundtrack

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Renny Harlin's CutThroat Island was one of those films that obviously should have been a big box office success with its lavish scenery, details (with authentic pirate ships built in scale) and high-flying action, but failed to get to the audience. In fact, CutThroat Island is one of the biggest flops of the 1990s, resulting in the bankruptcy of its studio and in the general neglect of the main actors Geena Davis and Matthew Modine for ...
...he really hit it big. CutThroat Island was originally going to be scored by David Arnold who was just fresh off from scoring the hugely popular Stargate, but scheduling conflicts resulted in his replacement with Debney. Debney took the project with much enthusiasm, opting to create an old-fashioned, purely orchestral swashbuckler in the style of the Golden Age masters (the score is dedicated to "Rózsa, Korngold, Steiner, and Newman"). Employing ... more

INTRODUCTION

Renny Harlin's CutThroat Island was one of those films that obviously should have been a big box office success with its lavish scenery, details (with authentic pirate ships built in scale) and high-flying action, but failed to get to the audience. In fact, CutThroat Island is one of the biggest flops of the 1990s, resulting in the bankruptcy of its studio and in the general neglect of the main actors Geena Davis and Matthew Modine for consideration for big starring roles in years to come. It is difficult to really understand why the movie didn't work; it certainly isn't a bad movie by any means, and it is generally well made with breathtaking cinematography and lots of action. Or maybe that's just the problem: there's so much action. I've seen the film a couple of times and I've never really been able to get to that enjoyable state of comfort that say Raiders of the Lost Ark always gets me into. And the main cast is not all that appealing (well, at least to me) apart from Frank Langella's Dawg. Well, what ever the reasons, it is a classic example of a film that was very ambituous but just came out in the wrong time (compare with the more slapstick Pirates of the Caribbean which was a huge success; or the much earlier The Sea Hawk of 1940 for that matter).

The story in short concerns a treasure, what else. Morgan (Geena Davis) is the daughter of a pirate who, along with two other family members, has a part of a map showing the position of the treasure. Dawg is one of them and wants the treasure for himself, and therefore kidnaps Morgan's dad. Morgan saves him from Dawg, and just before dad dies, he tells Morgan about the treasure (the part of the map is tattooed on his scalp). This results in a lengthy cat and mouse chase between Morgan and Dawg for who gets to the treasure first with the navy officials of Porte Royale causing further obstacles. Since the map is written in Latin, Morgan saves a swindler named Shaw (Matthew Modine) from death to decypher the text for her, although he doesn't really speak a word of Latin. Through many action escapades the film plods forward in a tiring pace, culminating in a grand final battle with Dawg's ship "The Reaper" and Morgan's ship "The Morning Star." Despite the film's poor performance in the box office, there is one aspect that has saved the film from total oblivion: the score of John Debney.

THE MUSIC

John Debney is one of the busiest composers working in Hollywood, favoured by many producers as being able to write music fast and adaptatingly. Throughout the early 1990's he was mostly involved in writing music for a bunch of movies that were never really meant to be remembered for long, but in the middle of 1995 he really hit it big. CutThroat Island was originally going to be scored by David Arnold who was just fresh off from scoring the hugely popular Stargate, but scheduling conflicts resulted in his replacement with Debney. Debney took the project with much enthusiasm, opting to create an old-fashioned, purely orchestral swashbuckler in the style of the Golden Age masters (the score is dedicated to "Rózsa, Korngold, Steiner, and Newman"). Employing the London Symphony Orchestra and London Voices, Debney wrote at white heat some of the most energetic and inspired music he has ever managed to put down on paper and has rarely been able to surpass. Despite being a somewhat over-used term by today, the word "swashbuckling" is really the only word that comes even close to describing this score. This is "pirate music" as it is supposed to be: bold, brash, energetic, involving. Rarely do I come across with a score that is so bristling with excitement that I am enveloped in the music making from start to finish.

The score begins is high style by the five minute "Main Title/Morgan's Ride" where we are introduced to the very memorable main theme. It is big, bold, heroic, brassy, the embodiment of adventure at the high seas with a constant percussive rhythm keeping up the pace to a great effect. The simple energy of the LSO and London Voices in this opening cue is so absolutely over-whelming I can't even write while listening to it at the same time. After pulling off this much excitement in the very first cue, one might think that it is impossible to be able to sustain this level of wonder for the following 120 minutes. Well, you'd be wrong; Debney never allows the score to get saggy or uninteresting before its over. What follows are many more action set pieces, but each has been handled in a way that it is never simply noise for the sake of noise or to simply provide filler for these escapades. No, the score keeps the thematic connections always at the top, kind of like what John Williams did in his early Star Wars scores, Indiana Jones scores and, in his closest comparison for a pirate movie, Hook. This is in evidence throughout the film with cues like "Carriage Chase," "To the Bottom of the Sea," and "The Battle." Apart from the action and the main theme, there is also a romantic love theme that appears in cues such as "First Kiss," "The Big Jump," and "Discovery of the Treasure." It is beautiful and shimmering, maybe just a touch on the side of ordinary, but very good nonetheless. And finally there is the darker theme for Dawg that appears in a few places like "Charting the Course," "Morgan Takes the Ship," and "Dawg's Demise/The Triumph."

SOME DETAILS AND LITTLE PONDERANCES

To go through all the tracks one by one would in the end be utterly futile as there is no way to find much fault in this score and the constant hyperbole would just get repetitive. But some details are necessary to give a little more idea for what you are getting. Of course the action is almost constant which (and this is the only negative point I can give you) can get tiring when you go through the entire score in one sitting. "The Language of Romance" is a notable departure with the main theme turned more gentle and playful with a harpsichord providing a sense of time and locale. "Setting Sail" is a brief but unrelentingly jolly "out to the sea" send off. This is one of the best bit of pirate music I've ever heard and stands as a prime example of how it should be done. Close behind comes the cue "To the Bottom of the Sea" which is an unbelievable piece with a dominating chorus creating a great sense of mystery and awe.

The cue "Morgan Takes the Ship" offers another great build-up of excitement with broad brass fanfares and a rhythmic sense of forward motion. The final battle scenes are another remarkable point where the action music is constantly kept alive with its varying orchestrations and thematic connection much like in "Carriage Chase" earlier. In "Dawg's Demise/The Triumph" the sense of victory is very tangible after so much building tension throughout the cue. And finally we have the "It's Only Gold/End Credits" which has to be one the most outstanding conclusion in film music history. After the last score cue comes to an end, the ensuing six minutes of the end credits presents all the main themes in succession without ever resorting to just editing the disparate elements together from previous score cues. It is a tour-de-force concert arrangement that keeps up the excitement to the very last moment. There are no words that can adequately describe the utter rush that this credits sequence brings and do justice to it. It is one of those pieces that will leave you at the very least tapping to the rhythm of it or, in the more extreme cases like myself, cause you to jump up and start air-conducting to it (which is why I'm so out of breath when writing this).

At this point it is interesting to compare CutThroat Island with the more recent Pirates of the Caribbean score by Klaus Badelt. Both came out from pirate films, both were written in roughly the same span of time, both are hugely popular, yet both are the complete polar opposites of each other. Debney's score is a grand, old-fashioned orchestral swashbuckler that was a classic when it came out, the essence of what traditional pirate music is; POTC is a hodgepodge score written by seven people with little inspiration and imagination, ripping off old scores and replacing real instruments with synthesizers, a score that could fit any other action film just as well. A true film score fan loves CutThroat Island to no end, but doesn't really care for POTC; a casual fan doesn't even know CutThroat Island when he or she buys POTC in quantity. This is an inherent problem in the film scoring world today: the more popular scores of today tend to be less original and inspired, yet they tend to sell better than the more worthy equivalents. Also when one composer can stun you to no end, when fifteen others working on one project makes you wonder "I paid money for this?" shows that quantity and popularity does not guarantee quality. This is only as a point of interesting comparison as the two films and scores share so much background in common, and I'm sad that Alan Silvestri wasn't able to toy with POTC after the success of The Mummy Returns. Maybe we could have ended up with another pirate score as worthy as CutThroat Island, but such is the way with the corporate world.

THE ALBUMS

The original album ran for a very generous 70+ minutes which is a very good representation of the music. The editing is done in such a way that the music keeps its energy level high at all times. Recorded at the wonderful Air Lyndhurst studios in London, the recorded quality and mixing of Simon Rhodes is absolutely stunning. The music simply attacks you with full force in a similar way as was the case with David Arnold's Stargate or the later The Mummy Returns by Alan Silvestri. This is exactly as a fully orchestral action/adventure score should sound: full, immediate, crisp and loud as hell (especially when it is backed up by so much outstanding music). There are two releases for the original album: the long out of print American nu.Millenia release, and the more available European Silva Screen release. The Silva version apparently features better sound quality than the more obscure American one and it is still pretty well available on the second market.

However, if you're a real fan, then you'll want to get the expanded 2-CD Prometheus release which offers the entire score of 120 minutes with bonus tracks of alternate album edits, a non-choral version of "Morgan's Ride," and a couple of synth demos of the main title and rescue cues that got Debney the assignment in the first place. There are also the few odd pieces of interest like "Purcell Snatcher" composed by orchestrator Brad Dechter and "The Wedding Waltz" composed by Debney for the marriage of Renny Harlin and Geena Davis (incorporating some of the CutThroat Island material as well). The complete score fledges out much of the development of the musical ideas as well as offering an extended view of the whole architecture, with the final battle cue alone expanded into an 18-minute long cue "The Battle/To Dawg's Ship/Morgan Battles Dawg/Dawg's Demise/The Triumph." It is available through www.buysoundtrax.com for $24.95 plus shipping. For all its worth, this is a score that any lover of orchestral music, soundtracks or fantastic adventure can't afford not to have at least in one form or another. Like I said before, very rarely has any one soundtrack created this kind of flurry of excitement and sense of awe that John Debney managed to pull out here. I could almost cry out of happiness, such is the feeling that I was left in and I simply can't recommend this enough. SIMPLY OUTSTANDING!!!

TRACK LISTING

Original 1995 Silva Screen/nu.Millenia album
1. Main Title/Morgan's Ride (4:39)
2. Carriage Chase (7:21)
3. The Language of Romance (2:41)
4. Setting Sail (1:05)
5. To the Bottom of the Sea (2:45)
6. Morgan Takes the Ship (4:32)
7. The Funeral (1:32)
8. The Rescue (3:41)
9. Discovery of the Treasure (2:19)
10. The Big Jump (2:40)
11. The Storm Begins (2:35)
12. Morgan Captured/Sword Fight (5:25)
13. Shaw Steals the Map (3:30)
14. Escape from Mordechai's (2:08)
15. Charting the Course (2:19)
16. First Kiss (1:56)
17. The Battle (6:11)
18. Dawg's Demise/The Triumph (3:31)
19. It's Only Gold/End Credits (9:42)

Expanded 2-CD Prometheus release

Disc 1
1. Main title/Morgan's Ride (4:38)
2. The Rescue/Morgan saves Harry (3:41)
3. Purcell Snatcher (composed by Brad Dechter) (2:58)
4. Shaw is Caught (1:15)
5. The Funeral (1:29)
6. Morgan in Command (2:51)
7. The Language of Romance (2:40)
8. A Lady Scorned (1:38)
9. Carriage Chase (7:21)
10. Ainclee Plots/To Spittelfield (3:46)
11. Uncle Mordechai (2:02)
12. Morgan Captured/Sword Fight (5:23)
13. Escape from Mordechai's (2:09)
14. Setting sail (1:03)
15. Charting the Course (2:19)
16. First Kiss/Love Scene/Dawg's Plan (3:12)
17. Shaw Discovers the Location (2:04)
18. Betrayal (2:12)
19. The Storm Begins (2:33)
20. To the Bottom of the Sea (2:43)
21. The Island (3:41)
22. Shaw Steals the Map (3:30
23. Discovery of the Cave (4:39)
24. Discovery of the Treasure (2:19)

Disc 2
1. The Wedding Waltz (2:43)
2. Caught (1:37)
3. The Rope (2:17)
4. Morgan and Shaw Jump Off the Cliff/The Big Jump (2:38)
5. Shaw Captured (2:32)
6. Morgan Takes the Ship (4:30)
7. The Hangman's Noose (3:56)
8. The Battle/To Dawg's Ship/Morgan Battles Dawg/Dawg's Demise/The Triumph (17:54)
9. It's Only Gold/End Credits (9:42)
10 Morgan's Ride (no chorus) (4:48)
11. Carriage Chase (alternate) (7:26)
12. The First Kiss (album edit) (1:54)
13. Dawg's Demise/The Triumph (no chorus) (3:31)
14. Morgan's Ride/The Rescue (synth demo) (7:25)

Music Composed by John Debney
Performed by The London Symphony Orchestra and The London Voices
Conducted by David Snell
Chorus Master: Terry Edwards
Music Editor: Tom Carlson
Principal Orchestrator: Brad Dechter
Additional Orchestrations: Jeff Atmajian, Frank Bennett & Don Nemitz
Music Recorded and Mixed by Simon Rhodes
Recorded at Air Studios, Lyndhurst, London

Silva Screen Records, 1995 (FILMCD-178)
Prometheus Records, 2005 (XPCD-157)

© berlioz
 

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