AMG Review of Caveman's Valentine (Soundtrack)

William Ruhlmann
All Music Guide

#The Caveman's Valentine finds composer Terence Blanchard teaming up again with director Kasi Lemmons and actor Samuel L. Jackson, with whom he worked previously on #Eve's Bayou. This time, the score presents a special challenge in that the main character of the film, Romulus Ledbetter, played by Jackson, is supposed to be a classically trained pianist who is also slightly crazy. On top of that, the movie is a mystery/thriller. Add up those plot elements, and Blanchard was faced with composing a piano-based, classically informed score full of dramatic and suspenseful passages, which might have seemed quite a task for a musician still best known as a jazz trumpeter. Running slightly more than an hour, this soundtrack album presents 28 musical cues from the film, many of which are brief passages meant to support the developments of the story. But using the Northwest Sinfonia, Blanchard does get to write more complete orchestral pieces at several points, notably the aptly named "Musical Rampage," "The Letter," and the seven-and-a-half-minute "Finale." His music is always functional, but it also displays a flair for classical styles.