September 8, 2014

  • Tyler's Latest Expendable Score

    The Expendables exploded onto the screen with a bit of a whimper in 2010 in this Sylvester Stallone project.  At its heart is the sort of old-fashioned action hero movie that was part and parcel of the 1980s for the actor.  Even with the poor reviews, the film did fairly good box office thus spawning two equally poorly reviewed sequels, though this latest August release seemed to tank at the box office.  In this third installment, one of the co-founders of this formerly CIA group of peratives is out to annihilate the entire team making this a “personal” war of sorts.  Brian Tyler is on hand for scoring duties that we all know would have gone to Jerry Goldsmith in his day—scoring a modern Rambo.  Tyler’s approach in many parts of this score does bear some resemblance to the master’s approach.  The thematic idea is not as memorable though, and yet the score is not just all bombast.

    It is also rather unusual to see a score for this big a movie show up on a "smaller" or specialty label like La-La Land.  However, it does make a lot of sense as they have been very instrumental in releasing many of Tyler's earliest scores and several for smaller films and so the good news is that scores like this in their catalog can really help them increase visibility for newer film music fans.

    A rising two-note motif evolves into a what will amount to a heroic “thematic” idea in Tyler’s score (and when it begins to appear more often, is a bit reminiscent of Goldsmith’s application of this technique).  The disc begins as one would expect with the sort of energetic rock-orchestral action music that fits this sort of film (“The Drop”).  Fortunately, moments of repose like “Lament” and “The Art of War” allow for thematic presentation enough so that the idea can be clearly stated before becoming enmeshed into the many action sequences of the score.  Tyler tends to group things in one-measure packages that then are simply repeated during vamping action sequences at first.  The result can be a sort of relentless, and occasionally, less interesting musical soup.  However, when the music can move in and out of the barrage of sound to lyrical thematic statements, the score gets a chance to shine a bit more.  “Infiltrating the Block” does this fairly well.  Here we get a bit of off-beat accents recalling some of the Goldsmith-like promise early Tyler fans heard in his music.  It is actually good to see some of that return in this score.  A very brief Mexican musical excursion provides bizarre contrast in “Galgo’s Grand Entrance” before we return to the busy and intense drumming and repetitive orchestral churning.

    For fans of action scores, The Expendables 3 will serve them well in what has been a rather lackluster summer.  There was a time when the film score field would be crowded with big action scores like this.  Tyler has managed to at least tone done the sort of relentless computer-generated ostinatos and electronic patterns that have been used to simply compete against the onscreen noise of the action films he has scored of late.  That proves to be a good thing here as the small thematic ideas at least provide additional continuity.  The score feels a lot less like it is on auto pilot as it progresses with opportunities to set up tense sequences employing a variety of orchestral and electronic/ambient effects such that they do not seem repetitive.  The sequencing of this release also helps aid in enjoying the score.