All the King's Men

After a delay of around one year, Steven Zaillian's remake of the 1949 film All the King's Men is finally released to theaters. Utilising a traditional orchestra, augmented with three pianos and lots of percussion, James Horner's score is restrained and dark. It's without doubt one of the darkest and serious scores the composer has ever written. The harmonies and orchestrations are genuine Horner, but refreshingly enough it never gets too familiar. With one exception - the third cue "Bring Me the Hammer and I'll Nail 'Em Up!". It's worth pointing out, however, that this cue isn't used in the final version of the film, but was replaced by another cue by Horner rather late in the scoring process. Something we should be grateful for, because it owes a little too much to Braveheart and Searching for Bobby Fischer. It's beautiful and entertaining, but this is the only time in the score where the listener without a doubt will think "I'm sure I have heard this music before..." The rest of the score successfully avoids guest appearances by previous Horner scores, however. There. With the ever present originality issue taken care of, let's move on to more interesting things.

The score's main theme is a brooding, serious affair. Dominated by the lower register of the orchestra, especially when it comes to the strings, it's dramatic and quite effective. Heard for the first time in the "Main Titles" - performed by a lonely and slightly nostalgic piano, before it's picked up by the rest of the orchestra - this themes crops up from time to time in various guises; performed by fiddle at the start of "Adam's World", for example. The love theme is classic Horner. No one can write such heart breaking, albeit deceivingly simple, themes as well as our James. Its appearance in "Anne's Memories", performed by piano, strings and woodwinds is a definite higlight. It's understated, but incredibly emotional, and when hearing this theme picked up by the strings it's hard not being affected emotionally.

Although mostly quite restrained and low-keyed, the score bursts into life, filled with drama, once in a while. "The Rise to Power", for example, includes some dramatic crescendos, complete with anvil hits and rumbling piano. Many reviewers have complained that Horner's score sort of ruins the film with its sentimental and overly dramatic music. Whether this is true I do not know, but on CD the music works great and considering that the score usually is so understated I find it difficult to believe that its impact on the film can be so negative. But then again, most film reviewers wouldn't recognize good film music even if it came up to them and introduced itself, while wearing a t-shirt that said "I'm good film music."

So the music is good, let's be clear about that. It's not great, however. Large parts are dominated by too much brooding underscore. And with a playing time of just under one hour, I find it hard to really focus on the music from start to finish. But cues like "Anne's Memories" certainly make this a score worth returning to from time to time.