Battle: Los Angeles
Composed by: Brian Tyler
Release date: March 8, 2011
Amazon page.
Amazon user's rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
All About Soundtracks Review:
Continuing his collaboration with director Jonathan Liebesman, Brian Tyler scores Battle: Los Angeles, which was catalogued by the critics as a poorly written and poorly acted movie, and the same could be said about half the movies Tyler scored. In this case, however, Tyler provides an unexpected disappointment.
(Read more.)
Battle: Los Angeles starts off the worst way possible: with a complete rip off of pre-existent music. If you're familiar with the Surface of the Sun cue from John Murphy's Sunshine, you'll notice the outrageous similarities that it has with the opening track of this album, Battle Los Angeles Hymn, a track driven by echoing electric guitars, strings and noble choir. This theme returns in its quiet deja vu chords in the final track, We Are Still Here.
For the first two listens, this theme is a guilty pleasure. Then, it's just annoying.
The main thematic idea of the score, though, is the heroic theme presented in Battle Los Angeles Main Title with horns and militaristic precurssion. Tyler creates a heroic piece too anonymous and too obviously based also on Remote Control scores (namely Jablonsky's Transformers), and however he uses this theme in a multitude of other cues like Marines Don't Quit, Elegy, Redemption, which are all action cues that feel like more and more of the same.
The only actually pleasant use of the theme is in Regret, where Tyler twists it to a beautiful string version, with small touches by electric guitars and choir, the instrumentation of the other theme or hymn, thus creating a nice mix between these two thematic ideas. This is an inteligent touch by Tyler.
Other nice cue of contemplative beauty is the guitar-driven Shelf Life, despite not being really related with the thematic ideas of the score.
The main theme returns at the climax, Abandoning Los Angeles, and then is reprised in the suite Batlle Los Angeles which is, perhaps the only interesting action piece of this score, where we can really hear the traditional Tyler action music, with agressive rythms and brutal orchestrations, maintaining the interest for its 5 minutes of duration.
The rest of the action music presents unfortunate similarities with other composers music, something Tyler doesn't need, because he's so much better than many of them. Thus, the rest of the scores reminds of the droning sound of Remote Control scores.
The extremely long duration of the album, another Brian Tyler signture, in this case makes everything even worse. If you appreciate Tyler's usually more inteligent and interesting orchestral action music, then this score is an exhausting listening that you'll probably not want to repeat.
This is probably one of the worst scores by Tyler, in the sense that he clearly imitates the temp track (and what a bad temp track) and instead of maintaining his own identity, he employs mainstream musical mannerisms. Adding the general musical anonimity of the themes and the droning sound of most action tracks, this score is largely unremarkable and a significant underachievement.
Maybe we could say that the director or the studio had some fault in this result, with the intention of having a score that sounded as mainstream as possible, but they probably did not force Tyler to rip off John Murphy's Surface to the Sun, which is perhaps the most unfortunate flaw of this score.
Just because Tyler is obviously capable of so much better, this score ends up being tedious and frustrating.
Unless, of course, you're a sucker for more Remote Control, generic scores.
Ups: if you love Remote Control, you have another bunch of droning action music and heroic anthems.
Downs: if you prefer Tyler's true identity, with engaging themes and truly exciting orchestral action music, than this score will be unimpressive, tedious, overlong, exhausting and frustrating because of the way it blatantly imitates other composers.
Noteworthy tracks: Regret, Shelf Life, Battle Los Angeles
Score note: 4/10
Preview: Arrival
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