Pearl Harbor was a much anticipated and hyped film about the Japanese attack on the American naval base Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. It boasted of great visual effects, historical accuracy and actors Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett and Kate Beckinsale to excite the young film goers. The film was shot down by critics and theater goers alike. Of the three-plus-hours of the film, the first two were wholly dismissed as boring and tedious, and when you got to the attack itself near the end, it wasn't enough to save the film from total destruction (despite the stunning visuals).
The score reflects the film perfectly. It was mainly composed by Hans Zimmer, a well-known veteran of film scoring and the founder of Media Ventures organization, a house for young, similarly inclined composers like James Newton Howard, Steve Jablonski and Klaus Badelt. There is only one word needed to describe Zimmer's score for Pearl Harbor: boring! This is quite possibly one of the most monotonous film scores I have ever heard, employing only one real theme, with sub-themes that sound so much like the main theme, that it's hard to tell them apart at times. There is absolutely no action music to be found, even in the attack scenes. Tracks 1-5 sound almost wholly alike with lot of very gentle strings, piano and other such instruments. And this mood never really gives up, making you (or at least me) very sleepy. Only on the track "Attack" do we find anything at all resembling action, but even then it is very unexciting.
Moreover, the main theme is very unmemorable. You need at least ten listening times (or more) before you can hum it without the score in the background. The score as a whole is not very original either, borrowing motifs from various other MV scores, like The Rock. To give at least some colour, we have the contribution of soprano Julia Migenes and several light solo instrumentalists and an occasional chorus. But nothing raises this score from being nothing more than very a mediocre affair.
The marketing ploy for the Pearl Harbor album is the song "There You'll Be," performed by Faith Hill. Even this song is nothing above average and should not be held as a very effective reason for buying this CD. All in all, if you want something that will lull you to sleep, then this will be a wonderful buy, but otherwise, its nothing more than uncharacteristic, unmemorable and boring underscore (sorry all Hans Zimmer fans).
Hans Zimmer's lush and romantic Pearl Harbor album inverts every expectation of what a ... more
World War II epic should sound like. Zimmer previously explored the American Pacific war in The Thin Red Line (1998), though this time he takes a more commercial dir...
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May 19th, 2004
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