The Peacemaker

Composed in 1997 for Mimi Leder's action thriller starring Nicole Kidman and George Clooney, Hans Zimmer's score for The Peacemaker expands on musical ideas presented in scores such as The Rock, Backdraft and Crimson Tide, meaning lots of electronics, bombastic brass anthems and muscular male choirs. Basically what the Media Ventures Sound ™ is all about. And no one does it better than Hans Zimmer himself, who more or less invented the sound with his score for Ridley Scott's Black Rain, back in 1989. It's actually a sound Zimmer isn't that fond of himself and one can understand that he has gotten tired of having to revisit it in scores for countless movies since then. Not to mention the large number of rip-offs out there.

But let's focus on The Peacemaker, which actually is a rather annoying score, and probably is the least enjoyable of Zimmer's scores in the same style. It's rather noisy and lacks the hummable and instantly likable main theme one has come to expect and take for granted. The score is dominated by chaotic action writing that doesn't seem to go anywhere. Or rather seems to go everywhere at once, constantly changing direction. The choral appearances are pretty nice, however, and gives the music a very majestic, powerful sound, reminiscent of what the composer did for Crimson Tide.

It's also similar to Crimson Tide in how the score has been edited on the soundtrack CD, with just five, but really long, tracks. Shorter tracks is probably something that would have worked in the favor of the music. The 17 minutes long "Chase", is just too long, with many of the highlights hidden among long sections of pretty bland underscore. Hans Zimmer has certainly written better action scores than this. The Peacemaker is a pretty decent score which unfortunately suffers from the attempt to fit in too much music in too little time. "Too many notes, my dear Mozart", to quote Emperor Joseph II.