With acclaimed scores such as the epic fantasy work Stardust, the classically elegant The Young Victoria and the recent action hit Kick Ass, British composer Ilan Eshkeri is quickly establishing himself as a major new name in film music. His score for Neil Marshall’s new Roman/Celtic adventure, Centurion, is a large orchestral score. Eshkeri made extensive research of Celtic music before he began work on the actual writing, and based his thematic material on discoveries of old folk songs he made when listening to old BBC recordings from the furthest reaches of the British Isles...

While, on balance I enjoyed Ilan Eshkeri's score for Centurion I couldn't help but be a little disappointed. I still listen to his beautiful score for Stardust every now and then and, while I wasn't expecting this soundtrack to be similar, I was hoping it would contain some of the same charm.

While it is a great score, there were way too many elements that seemed to have been "borrowed" from much better scores. The biggest influence is obviously Hans Zimmer's incredible score for Gladiator. It's almost as though the director used Zimmer's work as a temp track to the movie and then insisted that Eshkeri copy as much of it as possible.

There are also other tracks that reminded me of other soundtracks. 'Fort Attack' has segments that sounded very similar to James Horner's score for Jumanji; whilst 'The Ninth March On' opens with a section that is reminiscent of Alan Silvestri's Van Helsing score.

But as I mentioned earlier, the majority of this score is taken up with Gladiator-esque music. In fact, I don't think there was one track that didn't have a piece of music in it that sounded like it had been influenced by that movie.

Overall this is an enjoyable soundtrack - even though you can't help feeling you've heard most of it before.

7

Darren Rea