Vertical Limit: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (2000 Film)
Give Hollywood a star cast, a towering, ice-gripped mountain, and a cliché-ridden script and one thing is certain: somebody's going to get hurt. While many critics thought the real casualties were those filmgoers who shelled out for this cliff-hanging snow job, let's not overlook the work of scorerJames Newton Howard, whose solid efforts accounted for keeping the film's pace and action sequences on track. His score alternates from the rhythmically ethno-exotic (most dangerous, ice-gripped mountain littered with dead and dying Hollywood characters being located in faraway locales) to the traditionally Hollywood suspenseful and dramatic. Often using his typically seamless fusion of the symphonic and the synthetic, Howard's professional work here is solid and purposeful, as dynamically driven and diverse as the film is staid and predictable.--Jerry McCulley