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I loved this album, particularly the development of the love theme. I love that finale.
I'd be interested in hearing more as well.
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I agree, brilliant score.
I've always hoped they'd release a DVD of the director's cut, with Elisabeth Shue's death halfway through and the big deleted act three finale, where Val Kilmer chases the villain with a tank across Moscow and they have a huge battle in his exploding mansion. There were numerous stills released at the time and shots in some trailers.
It boggled my mind that they'd shoot all that and then cut it, letting the evil villain just get arrested by local cops. At least all the music for those scenes is on the disc.
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I gave this score a spin last night (after years on the shelf) and I have to say that while it's probably one of Revell's better scores, I'm not entirely thrilled by it beyond the love theme. A pity, because I remember really liking it when I first heard it apart from the rotten film. Certainly better than a lot of his recent ones, but of his early 90s work I think I still prefer THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE and BODY OF EVIDENCE.
NP: GREEN CARD (Hans Zimmer)
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The Love Theme Reprise is one of my favorite cues, ever.
If anyone is even planning an expansion you may take my money now.
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I gave this score a spin last night (after years on the shelf) and I have to say that while it's probably one of Revell's better scores, I'm not entirely thrilled by it beyond the love theme. A pity, because I remember really liking it when I first heard it apart from the rotten film. Certainly better than a lot of his recent ones, but of his early 90s work I think I still prefer THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE and BODY OF EVIDENCE.
NP: GREEN CARD (Hans Zimmer)
I recently rewatched the film and the score is very different from its album counterpart. There is also a ton of unreleased and extended sections of album cues. Breakin on the album I don’t see how it would have fit as the scene is much longer than the album cue and the film cue is nothing like the album cue.
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I recently rewatched the film and the score is very different from its album counterpart. There is also a ton of unreleased and extended sections of album cues. Breakin on the album I don’t see how it would have fit as the scene is much longer than the album cue and the film cue is nothing like the album cue.
The film was extensively re-edited and reshot at the very last minute. Elisabeth Shue originally died halfway through, and the second half of the film was Kilmer doing everything he did to get revenge. There was a massive action finale in the villain's mansion, which was built atop a huge oil storage facility in which he was hiding all the missing oil that the plot revolved around. Kilmer and the villain's henchman son, who killed Shue in a scene at Oxford halfway through, had a MASSIVE fight on a chandelier swinging directly above the lobby, which was breaking apart to reveal the oil tanks, and the son fell into the tanks at the end.
Test audiences HATED her dying halfway through, so they recut the film and rejiggered things. They deleted the ENTIRE ending, forcing them to resolve the film by having the villain arrested offscreen, with no big final act three confrontation. They shot a new postscript ending where Shue is reunited with Kilmer in a cottage in the UK and some additional scenes with her alone, first in the US Embassy in Moscow and then in London being questioned by UK cops, so she'd have a presence in the film beyond the point where she originally died. There's even an in-joke about this in the dialogue, she tells the cops that all she got out of knowing the Saint was a lot of "near-death experiences." This is a clever reference to her dying in the original version of the film.
There was a lot of footage of this finale in the very first teaser trailer, which was not on the DVD and which I have NEVER found online, but once they cut the ending, they left that footage out of the future trailers. A few outlets used stills from the deleted ending, like Empire, the British movie magazine. BOTH of the photos illustrating their review were of that scene:
Here you can see Kilmer fighting the henchman. The walking stick he is menacing Kilmer with (which appears briefly in the finished film) is what he uses to kill Shue in the original version - a hypoderrmic hidden inside it. This makes the final fight with it a lot more meaningful.
Here you can see Kilmer and the henchman fighting on the chandelier, right before the henchman falls to his death in the oil tanks below the mansion.
Noyce finished both versions of the film. he says this at the very end of his audio commentary on the DVD, at the very last second. He never mentions the massive changes to the film AT ALL until one sentence at the end, it's very strange and likely a contractual obligation. However he does mention that he completed the other version, hoping it would get a DVD release, which never happened. To this day, only those test audiences have ever seen the original version of the film.
The score on the album, as far as I can tell, seems to reflect what Revell wrote for the original version before the cuts and reshoots. The music for the big deleted finale is all there. The score album came out many months after the film. I can only presume there were arguments about what form to release the score in.
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Just dug out this CD and am giving it a spin for the first time in, I don't know, a decade at least. I actually listen to the Love Theme Finale all the time, but not the rest of the score, so this should be fun.
And I'm glad I found this thread - love hearing the info about the changed ending. Thanks for sharing that!
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AMAZING!!!
I've waited 23 years to see this!
It's bizarre, this is apparently a THIRD cut of the film, because it has the original ending, but it intercuts footage of Elisabeth Shue watching the events on TV, when she was dead at this point in the original film, and it cuts to the Scotland Yard scene with her at the end, which was part of the reshoots.
I guess Paramount just decided to insert the original ending into the existing film where she lives for this Russian release. I don't know why they didn't release this cut of the film everywhere.
I always found it UNFATHOMABLE that this MASSIVE ending was cut, when it was clearly the most expensive and elaborate sequence in the film. The sequence had nothing to do with her dying. It works just as well if she's still alive, though of course it gains emotional weight if she's dead since Kilmer is getting revenge against her murderer. The finished film has no big conclusion, it just suddenly ends, it's bizarre.
What's more bizarre is that all this music is on the original CD.
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What's more bizarre is that all this music is on the original CD.
Amazing indeed!!
This is a far more satisfying ending imho.
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What got me was that the final action scene went for under 7 minutes. Yet it was visually and emotionally satisfying.
Imagine - being able to wrap up a film without a 45 minute CGI borefest. It's almost unheard of.
Phillip Noyce is a criminally underrated director. He's super talented and extremely adept at staging complicated action scenes that are still clear and easy to follow, and have emotional stakes.
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The love theme is great... oops... it's Barry's Midnight Cowboy !
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