This can best be described as orchestral heavy metal. It is a high octane action score that manages to keep up the pace, although it is rather samey. Not a whole lot happens and it just moves from one exciting action cue to another. There are some nice quieter moments such as in Jade, although I'm not convinced they are musically connected to the rest of the music very well. However, they are a welcome break from the action. The firs track is probably the best of the action music as it starts off with a fairly sombre trumpet theme with percussion, but breaks into some typical pounding percussive Zimmer action music. The rest follows in a similar vein, but there is little development and becomes a little too generic for my liking. It is also pretty unoriginal, sounding very much like Backdraft and Crimson Tide a lot of the time. The main theme is OK, but not nearly as powerful as Crimson Tide and the variations of the other motifs aren't that great on the whole. Also, being written in a committee, it is difficult to know who did what, but there aren't any parts which make you wonder who it was written by. Zimmer is good at writing action scores, but they only tend to contain one or two good tracks and those are the ones which contain a cross section of the different themes and aren't totally action orientated. Overall, if you like Zimmer, you will probably like it, but I have yet to find an all round great Zimmer score, well, except for perhaps the The Lion King.
Rating ~ 