Though the aforementioned theme is indeed up-lifting, it may interest you to know that despite that fact, the score as a whole has an extremely malicious edge. This dark side is spearheaded by the theme for Jeremy Irons' character, the villain Profion, whose theme could give any average listener the chills. The truly unique aspect to this theme is the fact that it is in fact a minor-key varitation of the once rousing main theme.

If dark-flavored action music is not your style then you may do well to avoid this score since every single track contains facets of the gritty medieval setting of the film. Though this says much for the composer, it doesn't nessesarily say much for the movie.

The liner notes reveal the fact that this was recorded by two separate orchestras, one of which is the Northwest Sinfonia, which has been gaining notoriety and popularity at an astounding rate due to their excellent enterpretations of Michael Giacchino's Medal of Honor video game scores. Though the performance is handled by two separate orchestras and even two separate conductors, I cannot even tell a difference between the two. The performances are so remarkably close to each other in spirit that I'm not sure which ones are which, as the liner notes do not indicate which is performing on particular tracks.

Though much of the score is synth-driven it is almost hard to tell, much like Randy Edelman's score to the film Dragonheart. While this lacks the ingenious themes of Edelman's masterpiece, it is propelled by much stronger orchestrations. I simply love the rich textures, especially in the climactic performance of the main theme in the "Resurrection and End Credits" cue, which contains not only strong, brassy playing, but is backed up by wild, unrestrained string arpeggios.

Since modern promotional techniques dictate that just about any score album must contain at least *one* unrelated pop song, this includes a special "bonus track," which is a techno piece called "This is Not a Game." Personally, though I don't usually like the songs included on score albums, I have kind of developed a taste for techno music, so this song's inclusion on the disc does not bother me much, and since it plays after the score has concluded, it does not interfere with the listening experience.