James Newton Howard's career as a film composer was still very much in its infancy when he scored The Package for Andrew Davis (with whom he would later collaborate on The Fugitive). With an excellent cast led by Gene Hackman and Tommy Lee Jones, the movie was a somewhat intelligent Cold War thriller.

It's strange to chart the course of Howard's action music. Back in the days of things like The Package, there was a broad, long-lined style almost like James Horner, but not quite; but now his action material almost always comes off as imitation (and at that, second-rate imitation) Goldsmith. Here in The Package, he gets off to a great start, introducing an impressive militaristic action theme in the opening cue. After that, the music is a slightly mixed bag, with occasional, frenetic action material being interspersed with keyboard-dominated suspense music and some snare drums-only music. The former always impresses; the latter never does. Howard's pop music past also breaks through on occasion, in cheesy (embarrassing, to tell the truth) 80s-style synth-and-guitar tracks like "The Shoot Out" and "Boyette Leaves Safehouse", with unfortunate similarities to Harold Faltermeyer.

The album as a whole is a curious mix of genuine quality and almost mind-boggling awfulness (and the same inequity could be applied to Howard's career as a whole). Fans of the composer (and these days, there are very many of those) will surely find a lot to admire, but others will probably be split. The action music, especially the opening title and extended Chase music towards the end, makes it worth getting, but bear in mind that in between is really not the best.

Footnote: bafflingly, one "John Barry Prendergast" (delete his last name and you have what he is more commonly known as) is listed as playing keyboards in the orchestra credits inside.