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THE ROCK – Nick Glennie-Smith, Hans Zimmer, Harry Gregson-Williams
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One of the major summer blockbusters of 1996, The Rock is possibly the epitome of mid-1990s cinematic excess. Directed by Michael Bay and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson, it is a massive action epic of ridiculous proportions, self-important and serious but also somehow incredibly good fun, and it helped solidify Bay and Bruckheimer’s hyper-kinetic, testosterone-fueled, purposefully stylized aesthetic as the default for box-office smashes for several years thereafter. The film stars Nicolas Cage as FBI chemical weapons specialist Stanley Goodspeed, who is called into action to stop General Francis Hummel (Ed Harris). Hummel is a highly decorated Marine who has become increasingly bitter over the U.S. government’s refusal to acknowledge or compensate the families of soldiers killed during covert military operations. Hummel and a group of similarly disillusioned Marines steal a cache of VX nerve gas rockets, seize control of the former prison on Alcatraz Island, and take a group of tourists hostage, threatening to launch the weapons at San Francisco unless the government pays $100 million in reparations to the dead soldiers’ families. Read more…
Nick Glennie-Smith, 1951-2026
Composer, conductor and musician Nick Glennie-Smith died on August 16, 2026, at his home in Charlottesville, Virginia, after a period of ill-health. He was 74 years old.
One of the key figures in the development of the modern Hollywood action score, Glennie-Smith enjoyed a career spanning pop music, film, television and live performance. He was best known for The Rock, The Man in the Iron Mask, We Were Soldiers and Secretariat, as well as for his decades-long association with Hans Zimmer as composer, conductor and musical director.
Nicholas Hugh Glennie-Smith was born in London, England, on October 3, 1951. He began his professional career as a keyboard player, joining the progressive-rock group Wally in the 1970s and later performing or recording with artists including Leo Sayer, Cliff Richard, Roger Daltrey and Paul McCartney. He also worked with Roger Waters on When the Wind Blows and Radio K.A.O.S., and performed at Waters’s enormous 1990 production of The Wall in Berlin.
During the late 1980s Glennie-Smith became associated with Stanley Myers, and then subsequently with Hans Zimmer’s Media Ventures studio, which saw him relocate from the UK to Los Angeles. Initially he contributed additional music, conducting, keyboard performances, arrangements and orchestrations to films including K2, Cool Runnings, The House of the Spirits, The Lion King, Bad Boys, Crimson Tide and Beyond Rangoon. His combination of orchestral technique, electronic programming and practical experience as a performing musician made him particularly suited to the rapidly developing Media Ventures sound. Read more…
HIGHLANDER: ENDGAME – Stephen Graziano, Nick Glennie-Smith
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Back in 1986, when the original Highlander series began, Queen’s classic soundtrack song “It’s a Kind of Magic” proudly proclaimed that there can be only one. Fourteen years, three sequels and two TV series later, I still think they were right. Christopher Lambert has never bettered his original performance as the immortal clansman Connor MacLeod, both The Quickening and The Sorcerer were woefully poor movies compared to the hugely entertaining original, and Adrian Paul’s turn in the first of the two spin-offs contained more wood than your local branch of B&Q. Highlander Endgame, the fourth big-screen outing for the franchise, sees Connor MacLeod (Lambert – the cinematic hero) teaming up with Duncan MacLeod (Paul – the small screen hero) for the first time, to take on a new all-powerful and extremely evil immortal named Kell (Bruce Payne). Although the producers wax lyrical about the two actors being the “yin and yang, a symbol of wholeness”, it personally strikes me as being nothing more than a piece of opportunistic film-making by Miramax, eager to cash in on the popularity of the TV series and to give Adrian Paul a movie vehicle. And I thought they’d gotten rid of the last evil immortal when Mario van Peebles got chopped in half at the end of Highlander III… oh, well. There’s love interest in the form of actress Lisa Barbuscia, plenty of sword-wielding action, and the whole thing is directed by Douglas Aarniokoski. Read more…
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