Perhaps I'm just dumb, but I must admit to actually quite enjoying the first Tomb Raider movie.  At the very least, I didn't see what made it appreciably worse than the usual summer blockbusters.  It's musical history was somewhat chequered however.  After Jerry Goldsmith's name was the first to be attached, Michael Kamen actually signed to write the score, and indeed wrote a lot of it.  However, apparently he got fed up of having to constantly rewrite it to tailor to re-edits and Graeme Revell was brought on board at the last possible minute.  The end result sounded like what it was, a lengthy score that had been written and recorded in about ten days, and to say that it was unimpressive would be about the kindest thing one could say about it.  Despite being very successful financially, clearly the critics were not kind on the first movie (despite my aforementioned like of it) and so the second was to be a virtual "second attempt" to get things right, with Angelina Jolie being the only member of the original cast or crew to return.  Jan de Bont was enlisted as director (his first movie since the catastrophic failure that was The Haunting) and Craig Armstrong brought in to compose.  Then, in an echo of the troubles surrounding the first movie's score, Armstrong was fired and Alan Silvestri hired as replacement.  Silvestri had some time on his hands as a result of having just been fired himself, from Pirates of the Caribbean, and there was much speculation that he would recycle some of his Pirates music for Tomb Raider, but having now heard the latter, it doesn't seem like he can have done.

If anything, it's like a combination of his music for The Mummy Returns and Revell's efforts on the first Tomb Raider movie.  There is a short theme, which isn't used much, but in all honesty it sounds like a reject from something else and I'm surprised Silvestri didn't come up with something better.  The action music, when it comes, is as impressive as you might expect from the composer, who's no stranger to this type of movie, but it's surprisingly thin on the ground.  "The Luna Temple" is very impressive, as are a couple of later tracks, though the ubiquitous synth percussion does make it slightly less enjoyable on purely musical grounds than it could have been.

Suspense music makes up a surprising proportion of the album's generous 60-minute running time.  And to be honest it's all really rather dull.  A track like "I Need Teddy Sheridan" (and let's face it, who doesn't?) ambles on for the better part of six minutes without really doing a fat lot; similarly "Captured by the Shay Ling", which is another six minutes; and there are others.  Ambient synths, percussion and occasional orchestral hits make up these cues and they do nothing much whatsoever.

So all in all, this is something of a disappointment.  Given Silvestri's credentials I was expecting something a lot more vibrant and exciting.  To be honest, even the best tracks (and there are a few that do impress) are still a little routine by his standards.  The album does have one thing going for it though: numerous pictures of a scantily-clad Angelina Jolie.  It is very tempting to give it five stars just for that.  To be honest, sitting staring at them for an hour, who really cares what the music's like.

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Tracks