Given that the film is about the use of Navajo Indians - sorry, Native Americans - during the Second World War, it is unsurprising to note that the music starts with an unsurprising call to the wild, courtesy of Phil Ayling's Indian Flutes. There is surprisingly little of the flutes throughout the rest of the score, but the cliché isn't really necessary. The first few tracks open reasonably strongly, the action material here is more interesting than Horner's other scores of late, with more than just endless string runs and brass hits. It is written with that basis, but Horner adds more layers - usually trumpets and odd bits of low brass that overlap to form some moderately interesting and surprisingly tense counterpoint.
Although interesting enough to listen to, the main theme seems to be pulled from the James Horner Generic Noble Main Theme Wizard, the threatening motif is yet another re-run of Willow and the old Aliens Khachaturian ballet motif. It is sad that when the score is at its more generic and themeless, that it's actually more interesting since it tends to sound less like something else. Unfortunately, there isn't a great deal of variation in the action scoring so it all starts to become a bit boring.
Although not taking the CD length to the extremes of some of the recent Horner releases, one can't help feeling that a passable 45 minute album lurks in there somewhere. Up to a point, the action is quite good, but the sameness of it starts to get wearing, the boringness of the main thematic material becomes obvious. Undoubtedly dramatic dynamite in the film itself, but on CD, another bridge too far. Yet another Horner score where it's been done better elsewhere.
Rating ~ Total Time ~ 66:55
James Horner's recent releases have not inspired the world. We can only assume that the success of the score to Titanic was a by-product of the of the film and not a great deal more. Although he has scored plenty of high grossing and successful films including the 2001 Oscar winner, A Beautiful Mind, few of the scores have been notable. Unfortunately Windtalkers continues the trend. What makes it sad is that the music itself isn't all that terrible, not especially inspired, but by the end of the album there's almost nothing new and little to recommend to anyone who owns any number of other earlier (and probably better) Horner scores.
