Despite a somewhat maligned reputation, Sylvester Stallone has made and appeared in some fairly decent films and currently seems on a kick to revive his career by delving into his back catalogue with another Rocky film and a fourth Rambo. In fairness, the original films for both series were pretty damn good, although the sequels have, perhaps inevitably, been disappointing. However, both Rambo 4 and the recent Rocky have garnered generally decent reviews and are not feeble late career ego trips as could have happened. Where Bill Conti was around to score Rocky, Jerry Goldsmith sadly didn't live to work on Rambo and so Brian Tyler follows in his footsteps (as he half does with his recent Aliens vs Predator sequel score). Unfortunately, as Marco Beltrami failed to do with his Omen remake score, Tyler largely fails to capture the flavour or match the quality of Goldsmith's originals, especially the action heavy second installment, neither does Tyler really do much to capture the more noble spirit of First Blood.

The album opens with Goldsmith's original Rambo theme, a poignant, but stoic trumpet melody that is, surprisingly, not one of Goldsmith's better known melodies despite its obvious quality. It certainly had me thinking "oh that's the Rambo theme" on first listen. Oddly, Tyler includes the "theme" at the opening and then the Main and End Title together at the end of the album. This slightly dubious production follows from the similarly poorly produced Aliens vs Predator album which neither follows the film order nor is sequenced (in true John Williams style) for the ideal listening experience on disc. The upshot here is that Goldsmith's material bookends the score and effectively stands alone from Tyler's own material which rarely references it (a hint at the end of Conscription is an effective touch) nor follows Goldsmith's stylistic lead.

It seems unfortunate that after such a promising start, the quality of Tyler's work has been pretty variable and Rambo is far more Media Ventures than Jerry Goldsmith. It's not that there's anything overtly wrong with it, but after the complexity of some of his early scores - The Hunted or even his replacement Timeline which manages to be as good as Goldsmith's original - there isn't much here to single out Tyler as a composer of talent. With composers such as John Powell writing such thrilling action scores, Tyler's work here seems positively insipid; there's plenty going on, but extended sequences of action scoring, from No Rules of Engagement, through to The Rescue, Attack on the Village and The Compound, bang away on the percussion, feature slow brass lines and strings that seemingly plug away on the same note until the chord changes.

The slower material is similarly Media Ventures in style, Aftermath being a case in point; the adagio strings and horn chords sound noble enough, but the melodic material is conspicuously weak compared to the original Goldsmith melody (why didn't Tyler just use it a lot more?! It's not like the Rambo theme has been overused previously). That the album reaches James Horner-esque lengths does it no favours at all and says pretty much all it has to say within the first half a dozen tracks. An hour of simple, loud action music and simple, noble adagios isn't sufficient to sustain the interest. If you like Hans, Klaus, Harry Gregson-Williams and chums then this'll hit your buttons, but another action score I could easily have passed and one that makes me miss Goldsmith all the more.

Rating ~

1. Rambo Theme (3:36)
2. No Rules of Engagement (7:11)
3. Conscription (2:57)
4. The Rescue (4:06)
5. Aftermath (2:35)
6. Searching for Missionaries (7:08)
7. Hunting Mercenaries (2:45)
8. Crossing into Burma (7:01)
9. The Village (1:45)
10. Rambo Returns (2:45)
11. When You Are Pushed (2:25)
12. The Call to War (2:53)
13. Atrocities (1:41)
14. Prison Camp (4:43)
15. Attack on the Village (3:03)
16. Rambo Takes Charge (2:24)
17. The Compound (7:50)
18. Battle Adagio (3:12)
19. Rambo Main Title (3:12)
20. Rambo End Title (3:00)

Total Time ~ 75:42