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| Balfe |
Bad Boys for Life: (Lorne Balfe) Among the better
enduring concepts of the Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay era of
testosterone explosions has been the
Bad Boys franchise, each of
its entries proving more successful than the one before. Returning to
kick drug cartel ass are Miami detectives played in true buddy-cop form
by Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. While their antics had freewheeling
flair in the prior two films of 1995 and 2003, the 2020 sequel,
Bad
Boys for Life, offers the characters as they've matured into
retirement and grandparent duties, largely exploring Smith's character,
Mike Lowrey, as he deals with a relationship from the past that is
returning to assassinate him. The script allows for an even greater
level of character development than the prior films, though there's more
than enough punching and shooting to suffice for the adrenaline junkies.
In a year overshadowed by a pandemic's shutdown of movie theatres,
Bad Boys for Life managed one of top box office performances of
the year and broke the domestic record for a January release. One of the
more popular production elements of these
Bad Boys films has been
their music supervision, the Inner Circle song, "Bad Boys," remaining
supreme throughout the concept. Not to be overlooked, however, is the
score of the original 1995 film by Mark Mancina (with assistance from
conductor Nick Glennie-Smith), a true symbol of the height of ascendance
for the Hans Zimmer Media Ventures sound and a long-time favorite for
enthusiasts of such music. That masculine but highly affable and at
times intimate score of reggae influence was followed by a rather poor
extension by Trevor Rabin for the sequel that lost all the personality
that Mancina had brought to the table. For
Bad Boys for Life,
another franchise bad boy of equal Zimmer descent, Lorne Balfe, stepped
in to supplement the movie's usual assortment of songs with a score that
strives to resurrect the tone and themes of the first score to a much
greater degree. He is joined by Glennie-Smith in the conducting role for
good measure.
Balfe has been known to yield impressive sequel
interpretations of legacy action modes, and his efforts for
Bad Boys
for Life are commendable in some respects but lacking in others.
While he truly embraces the Media Ventures foundation and reprises the
primary two Mancina themes and underlying staccato styles, he misses the
mark in other ways. One of the most attractive aspects of Mancina's
score was how raw it sounded. It emulated the sharp edges of the two
lead characters with both confidence and pizazz on what appropriately
came across like the product of a shoestring budget. By comparison,
Balfe's production is a far more refined version of that same general
approach, but that gentrification of the atmosphere loses the charm of
the music's origins. The Mancina and Glennie-Smith music for
Bad
Boys offered a balance of brazen guitar and string action, reggae
coolness, and surprisingly touching interludes for conversational
scenes. Balfe unfortunately fails to adapt the latter two elements
adequately into his work, the Miami atmosphere mostly drained from the
soundscape. The steel drums and electric guitar are highly restrained in
the mix here. For a film with so much weighty interpersonal interaction,
it's odd to hear the abandonment of the solo guitar and keyboarded
passages of tonal beauty as well. In their place, Balfe beefs up both
the action element and offers an almost too melodramatic new theme for
the familial pursuit at the heart of this story. On the upside, the
action is anchored by Mancina's main theme, a pair of six-note phrases
that Balfe liberally adapts into a myriad of circumstances here. It's
great to hear this theme in full force again, even if some of its
immature allure from 1995 has been replaced by a highly refined version
of the same thing. You do get hints of the original recording's
character in the form of the grunting exhales and descending electric
bass motif that often accompanies the main theme. That secondary,
descending motif had a much larger role in defining the environment of
the lead detectives in the original score, so hearing it relegated to
background duties under the main theme in
Bad Boys for Life is
something of a disappointment.
For most listeners, Balfe's significant arrangements of
the primary theme will easily suffice to buoy this score, especially in
the liberal application in diverse modes. In a cue like "It's Good Shit
Lieutenant," listeners will have to decide if they can appreciate the
update of the theme so that it has the booming low brass accompaniment
of Zimmer 2010's fame and fantasy-like choir mixed with a touch of
manipulation over the top. The new theme of the score is tied to that
choral presence, representing the admittedly scary but not so
overwhelming concept of the family pursuing Lowrey. Balfe overplays his
hand here, the theme for these quasi-villains summarized with suspense
in "Take Back What's Ours" and "The Truth" and eventually blossoming
into overblown melodrama by "One Last Time." These passages completely
lose the Mancina touch and would be far more comfortable in Klaus
Badelt's
Catwoman score. At times, Balfe understandably boils
this idea down to one of lament, emulating, like so many others, Howard
Shore's death motif from
The Lord of the Rings at 1:49 into
"Prayer," 2:52 into "The Truth," 2:32 into "We Ride Together, We Die
Together," and the opening of "Promise to God." Some of the straight
action material resembles holdovers from Balfe's venture into the
Terminator universe, as in some of the slappy, manipulated
portions of "Ambulance Heist." It's important to remember the upside
with this score, though, and it comes in roaring portions that best
capture the Mancina spirit with the main theme. The "We Ride Together,
We Die Together" end credits arrangement combines the unused pair of
"Bad Boys for Life" and "What Else You Got?" (complete with exotic
woodwind effects for the Latin American element) with the lament theme
to best summarize the score. For some listeners, the beefy substance of
the performances of these cues will thrill; others will miss Mancina's
more playful percussion especially. Overall,
Bad Boys for Life is
a more mature version of the original inspiration, a mixed bag of
impressive reverence and unnecessary bloating of ambience. Balfe shows
respect to the vintage Media Ventures sound, and that alone merits
praise. The score album clocks in under 40 minutes and its presentation
is totally out of film order. Expect to be pleasantly surprised by the
loyalty to Mancina's main theme, but don't assume the rendering will
appeal all the same.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For Lorne Balfe reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.83
(in 30 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 2.86
(in 23,359 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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