Having written brilliant scores for dumb movies more times than most people can remember, it seemed that Elliot Goldenthal was finally getting some decent films to score, with Julie Taymor's brilliant Frida being followed by Neil Jordan's acclaimed The Good Thief.  Then, he won the Academy Award for Frida and the first project he picked afterwards was..?  A small art-house film from Europe perhaps?  An adult drama exploring themes of relationship?  A historical drama chronicling the Spanish Civil War?  Or possibly a big-budget remake of a long-forgotten shoot-em-up cop show from the 1970s?  I must admit that I'd never even heard of the 1975 series SWAT, but someone decided to make it into a movie, with Samuel L. Jackson and Colin Farrell, and Goldenthal became the rather unlikely choice of composer.

He's explored slightly similar territory before with Heat, and there are certainly similarities between that and this new score, but by and large SWAT is much more action-orientated and less laid-back.  The album opens with the ten-minute action set-piece "Bullet Frenzy" which covers a lot of ground musically, with the chilled beats of The Good Thief here being accompanied by Goldenthal's trademark brass trills, angular string writing and complex percussion tracks, and also some furious work for electric guitars that slightly brings to mind his brilliant music for In Dreams.  "My Big Black Assault Weapon" (the track titles are as humorous as ever when Goldenthal works on films he knows are trashy) has an almost John Barry / James Bond-style trombone motif; and "AK-47 Scherzo" is a really wonderful, if brief, piece of music.

While the score's action parts are as good as Goldenthal's inevitably are, it's the chilled-out stuff that doesn't really cut it for me.  "Three Chords in Two Minutes" is exactly that, just three chords endlessly repeating with a house beat laid over the top.  The good thing is, however, that just as you might start to get bored, a knockout action piece like "Run For Your Life" is just around the corner. 

Alongside Goldenthal's highly-impressive score (probably alongside Don Davis's The Matrix Reloaded as the best for an action blockbuster this summer) are three songs, including an updated version by Danny Saber of Barry deVorzon's theme from the tv show - though Goldenthal's kick-ass arrangement of it in "SWAT Sticker" is far better - and the amusing "Samuel Jackson" by Hot Action Cop, whoever they might be.

In many ways this is the quintessential Goldenthal score, containing pretty much all of the elements that appeal to his fans.  He has such a strong and identifiable style that many of his scores share so many characteristics, they may seem interchangeable at first; but deeper looks are always needed and what is remarkable is how fresh Goldenthal really manages to keep everything.  His orchestration has a lot to do with it because he always does something interesting and in many ways I see him as something of a successor to Alex North (though the gap in quality of the films the two composers worked on is light-years across) in that he always sticks to his guns, writes his way, goes against the grain and actually manages to stand out in a field that is becoming ever more homogeneous.  SWAT is like an oasis in a barren wasteland of summer scores. 

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