James Horner's score releases of late have been pretty long, but I think this is just about the longest single CD ever. It seems a shame that he didn't win an Oscar and contract with Sony Classical in his early days, just think how nice such lavishly long albums of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, Krull or Brainstorm would have been. Of course, Krull has now been re-released fully expanded, but if The Perfect Storm album was only half an hour long, I find it unlikely that anyone would bother to fluff it up to almost 80 minutes in twenty years time. The film is based on a real life hugely freaky storm where three different storms collided and by the looks of the liner images, stars George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg (presumably chosen because they would look plausibly rugged) the film makes great pains to recreate the intensity of the occasion. It has been commented that James Horner's music appeared over every minute of even the loudest and most incessent of the wave and rain lashed action sequences, but I'm not terribly surprised - the opportunity to pour music over films like glue is one that directors find hard to resist.
The greatest feeling I get from listening to The Perfect Storm is that James Horner wasn't terribly inspired with the film. In theory it should have been a fairly decent source of heart tugging emotion, but even these sections don't seem terribly sincere. Coming Home from the Sea introduces the main theme which is bearly memorable, but crops up enough times that by the end you might remember some of it. One addition to the orchestra that works reasonably well is an eletric guitar which gives it a somewhat Michael Kamen feeling, although there would be no mistaking the two (apart from a few seconds of Small Victories which sounds like it's escaped from the finale to the American Symphony from Mr Holland's Opus). The action music is variable; mainly sticking to the vioins carrying it along and then dotting horn chords over the top. Several sections of Small Victories and Coast Guard Rescue are fairly effective, but are still surrounded by pretty unexciting stuff. If you're going to score action sequences within a storm, one might expect something a little more abrasive and well, tempestuous.
"There's no goodbye...only love" might have a pretentious title, but is a reasonably attractive cue which makes best use of the main theme and some rather lovel acoustic guitar riffs. The album is rounded out by John Mellencamp crooning Yours Forever in a sub Michael Kamen style ballad. It's actually not a bad song, the arrangement is good (particularly the folksy acoustic guitar opening and closing), but Mr Mellencamp isn't exactly a wonderful singer - kind of Bryan Adams but with even less quality of tone - which rather negates any good points. Basically we have another very overlong James Horner score album that might have had repeated listening value had it been half the length, but as it stands, is fairly repetitive on its own and there aren't really any great highlights, just odd flashes that are more interesting than the rest. Horner fans may like it, but otherwise something of a dud.
Rating ~ 
Total Time ~ 79:10