James Horner - Red Heat Soundtrack (Score, OST) (1988)

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James Horner - Red Heat Soundtrack (Score, OST) (1988)

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Original Review
Red Heat is quite possible the most peculiar score James Horner has ever written, drawing on influences as diverse as Russian Opera and Starsky and Hutch. The Main and End Titles are probably the best cues on the album: strong, string and percussion based marches (with an element of Glory in there somewhere) with a mixed-voice choir singing in Russian over the music. The effect is rather unusual, but works well in the context of the film. Russian Streets is an interesting action cue, using what I can only assume to be a balalaika to add an eastern touch to standard action fare: dissonant chords on strings, blaring trumpets, an extremely rapid percussion element and tolling bells and a glissando. This then goes into Cleanhead Bust, which starts off rather well: a funky disco beat and a solo saxophone with different synth sound effects here and there, but after a minute and a half changes suddenly to something completely weird: apparently random squeaks and squawks on a saxophone with a thrumming guitar, an occasional cymbal, a peculiar drumbeat and something that sounds like somebody going 'shhhhhhooooom' down a microphone. And it just continues like this for the next two minutes! Anyway. Most of the rest of the score is action stuff, including a bit of his favourite instrument, the shakuhachi in 'Victor Escapes' and 'Hospital Chase', a trendy synth sequence with steel drums and a sax in 'Tailing Kat'. There isn't really a lot more you can say really - there is no main theme to bind it all together and no melody of sort - just a lot of rhythms and textures. Unusual, to say the least, and in my opinion one of Horner's lesser efforts. But, really, what can you do with a film which pairs Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Belushi?