Customer Reviews

Rough Riders (1997 Television Film)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The name Elmer Bernstein immediately brings to mind "Western Themes" for students of film and film music. His legendary score for "The Magnificent Seven" will probably always be the definitive Western score. For the mini-series "Rough Riders" (1997), director John Milius chose two Bernsteins to write the music, Elmer to write a main theme and conduct, and his son, Peter, to do the score. And the music is "rough and ready," a perfect fit to the tale of Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders. The film is over the top at times, but Tom Berenger's portrayl of a young Roosevelt is outstanding (note he also co-produced the project). The joint effort of son and famous father here is unique, and it produced some very memorable musical moments. Most of the score is on the disc, but one small complaint concerns the order of the tracks which does not follow events in the film. Overall, one is moved to give in and remark..."bully!"

The music from this great war-epic/historical-drama/western-adventure movie was magnificent (as in Elmer "Magnificent Seven" Bernstein.)

So why don't I give this cd 5 stars? Because it doesn't have ALL of the music from the movie! The movie itself opened with a slow montage of stills of photos & newspaper clippings to give the audience an idea of what led to The Spanish American War. Over that sequence, Bernstein wrote a moving score that builds slowly to a thundering, inspiring theme that's just as impressive as his theme to "The Magnificent Seven." Well, don't expect that musical arrangement to be on this soundtrack, at least not in it's entirety & at least not in the way it was used in the film!

It's still a good cd, worth buying, but I think that soundtracks should feature the complete score from a film, not just some of it! (And for that matter, it would help if the songs are arranged in order of their use in the film!)

This cd is a slightly disappointing treatment of a musical score that deserved to be shown it's entirety.

This soundtrack is great. It takes the themes right out of the movie. Some tracks are not on it but about 95% of them are. Great to listen to while driving or when you need a boost during a long day. Hey...if you liked the movie your going to love the soundtrack.

Great soundtrack from a great movie! It is a shame it does not contain every thing from the movie, for example the songs "Minstrel Boy" and "Garry Owen" are not on this. Both songs are available elsewhere but it would have been nice to include them on this album.
However I strongly recommend this CD!