Outland

The Outland soundtrack reunites composer Jerry Goldsmith with director Peter Hyams three years after their first collaboration, the cult-classic sci-fi opus Capricorn One. In the interim, Goldsmith also scored Ridley Scott's landmark Alien, and Outland can't help but suffer by comparison with such distinguished and innovative works. Recalling Capricorn One in its dense, foreboding arrangements and evoking Alien in its atmospheric electronic textures, Outland represents an ambitious but largely unsuccessful attempt to meld the two approaches. Goldsmith's formal complexity notwithstanding, the music makes only minimal impact when experienced separately from Hyams' onscreen narrative, lacking the dramatic exactitude that characterizes the composer's finest efforts. ~ Jason Ankeny