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| Balfe |
Bad Boys: Ride or Die: (Lorne Balfe) Despite the
shockingly poor behavior of franchise star Will Smith at the 2022
Academy Awards, Jerry Bruckheimer was undaunted in pressing forward with
a fourth film in the
Bad Boys franchise. The preceding film,
Bad Boys for Life, mopped up at the theatres just prior to the
pandemic of 2020, and these later entries tease the notion that its two
1990's era stars are too old for their usual crime-busting antics but
nevertheless thrust them into more such adventures. The corruption to be
uncovered in 2024's
Bad Boys: Ride or Die lies within the two
detectives' own Miami department, and the script is essentially yet
another long chase to uncover cartel connections, weed out the bad guys
within, and, of course, shoot a whole hell of a lot of henchmen and
other undesirable, well-armed nasties. The tone of this movie also
includes a hacking component related to the investigation into the
corruption, but the core heart of the concept's appeal remains rooted in
flying bullets and exploding whatevers. Despite familiar plot elements,
these 2020's movies have lost the raw appeal of the 1990's origins for
the franchise, and nowhere is that change more prevalent than in the
underscores for the films. When Lorne Balfe took over the franchise's
music for
Bad Boys for Life, there were still some vestiges of
the original music's character kept alive, and it helped that Nick
Glennie-Smith remained involved. But the tone of what he and Mark
Mancina produced for
Bad Boys has been abandoned to an even
greater degree with Balfe's return for
Bad Boys: Ride or Die. The
crew for this second Balfe score is mostly different, seven ghostwriters
mostly turning over from the four that had contributed to
Bad Boys
for Life. This resulting shift not only forces the music even
further from its snazzier reggae roots but also causes issues of
coherency in
Bad Boys: Ride or Die. More than its predecessor,
you get the impression that the various parts of this score never quite
become comfortable with each other, the entirely never gelling despite a
moderately successful narrative in some parts. Generally, whereas Balfe
had taken Mancina's original franchise sound melodramatic in
Bad Boys
for Life, he strives for a more industrial and electro-technic
personality in
Bad Boys: Ride or Die, likely for the digital
elements of the story.
The loss of the reggae tone remains a massive problem,
steel drums diminished even further in the mix here to just a couple of
cameo appearances, and muted ones at that. Instead, listeners receive
increasingly pounding industrial percussion akin to
Terminator
Genisys in "Bridge Barrage" and "Reggie in Action" while synthetic
groaning and dissonance really hurts this score early in "Hacking
Howard" and late in "Columbian Manicure." It's a far more abrasive work
overall given that most of the familial drama built into the previous
entry is abandoned here outside of the uncharacteristically smooth death
sequence in "Basement of the Ocean." The ensemble consists of brass and
strings behind the usual electric bass, guitars, and tons of
synthesizers. Vocals, while present in a few places, have little impact
aside from one pair of cool insertions late in the score. The "Bad Boys"
song lyrics are incorporated into the background of "Reggie in Action"
nicely, both in the middle and end of the cue on either side of Balfe's
adversity theme. Thematically, Balfe retains the Mancina and
Glennie-Smith core identities from
Bad Boys and continue to
develop them into new incarnations. Mostly, however, this work is
defined by Balfe's adversity theme from
Bad Boys for Life,
shifting from a villain identity to become the overarching narrative
tool of the franchise for the aging detectives' own perseverance. The
main franchise theme's secondary bass riff is even more marginalized
than in the previous score, relying mostly on the primary six-note call
and answer phrasing that opens and closes "Bad Boys: Ride or Die" sans
most of the originating original steel drum personality but managing
once again to work in one of the trademark male grunts of the theme and
arguably recorded better. The theme is pressed into action and suspense
duty thereafter, opening "Sugar Rush Shootout" briefly before devolving
into wretched, grating action mode. (This cue is truly awful for most of
its running time.) Interestingly, the theme is adapted for the death
scene in an elongated formation to serve the dreamy choral atmosphere of
"Basement of the Ocean." From there, however, it's mostly unremarkable,
shifting to soft suspense early in "Bridge Barrage" and an ominous major
phrase later. The bass riff is given its own moment of sneakiness late
in "Prison Yard Attack," but don't expect to hear it much elsewhere.
Slight references for the six-note phrases exist throughout the second
half of "Hacking Howard" in suspense, are badly and aggressively
manipulated electronically in "Flammable Fluid," and inform the grungy
rhythms in "Finding McGrath."
The main Mancina theme is diminished even further in
the final moments of the score for
Bad Boys: Ride or Die. A
guitar teases it early in "Taking Heavies," strings and brass later
engaging it in action mode, and the idea's chords help guide the ambient
suspense early in "Standoff." But that's it. The returning adversity
theme that Balfe had freshly applied to the villains in the previous
movie is the most frequent contributor here, dominating the middle of
"Bad Boys: Ride or Die" on strings and brass over the descending Mancina
riff. It's still dripping with overblown Balfe melodrama, but it's
fuller and better set to percussion in this arrangement. The idea stews
at the outset of "Prison Yard Attack" before exploding into obnoxious
synthetic blurting in the middle of the cue. It receives low string
allusions in "Hacking Howard" and opens "Framing the Boys" with some
moderate fright before the cue disintegrates into noise, the motif
reaching out of the muck late. The adversity theme combines synthetics
and orchestra for a large crescendo late in "Reggie in Action," emerges
from the synthetic ruckus in the middle of "Taking Heavies," opens "No
More Prayers" on threatening brass (turning to lament later before an
action burst), and builds with momentum after two minutes in "Standoff,"
where it guides the post-climax meandering via a generic drama
crescendo. Balfe's lamentation theme from the prior score doesn't
explicitly return, but it is seemingly adapted into something different
on organ-like tones late in "Basement of the Ocean." The only new
material in
Bad Boys: Ride or Die exists for its own villains,
but this theme meanders anonymously around key with minimal propulsion
and eerie sound effects. Its quiet stomping on strings is joined by the
theme's true calling card, somewhat humorous seagull effects, in "Fear
is a Tool." The villain theme makes a quick cameo in the middle of
"Prison Yard Attack" while the seagulls return in "Hacking Howard" and
"Framing the Boys." Bass carries the theme in the latter half of
"Finding McGrath" among the seagulls, and it becomes a bit ponderous
early in "Columbian Manicure" with a few more bird calls before
exploding later on terrible synths. The idea earns a bit steadier
orchestral posture at the start of "Taking Heavies" with the same
seagulls and overlaps the adversity theme well throughout the cue's
middle. Ultimately, however, the score for
Bad Boys: Ride or Die
loses both the charm of its original inspiration and the dramatic appeal
of Balfe's stance for the preceding film. This entry simply degenerates
too often into cheap, stock suspense and action for the genre, parroting
tired synthetic techniques and yielding an unsatisfying 48-minute
score-only album that offers little new of interest aside from the
better-recorded opening suite.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For Lorne Balfe reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.9
(in 29 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 2.89
(in 21,833 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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