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Giacchino uses his performers for Bad Times at the El Royale to establish atmospheric textures that achieve the right sultry tone, but they accomplish little else. The little bit of devious humor in "A Room With an Entrez-Vous" is not enough, and the same goes for the element of intrigue, which never quite gets going in "Rough Around the Ledger" and "It's Ms. You to You." While the score is appropriate for the era, there isn't much outright 1960's tone in the performance inflection, "Let the Spieling Begin" barely touching upon it. Much of the score consists of shifting rhythmic strumming, banging, and chopping, the techniques of dissonant haze and violent crescendos continuing as basic tools for the composer and losing all shine not long into the experience. After some intriguing instrumental introductions, the score takes its turn towards despair in "Mirror Mortals," the great tones of the specialty contributors applied as to produce a demeanor that is often extremely unpleasant. Even worse, whole sequences are minimal and boring; "The Doors off Deception" to "Voyeur in So Much Trouble" suck the life out of the middle of the story for a long period of time. Likewise, "Rose and Cons," "A Blaze of Allegory," "Billy Lee is Not My Lover," and "Roulette the Chips Fall" combine for 17 consecutive minutes of hapless muck. Easy tonalities are rare, though the action cues "When Push Comes to Hoover" and "A Bang Up Robbery" do bring some appeal. Darker versions of that action in "I Spy With My Little FBI" and "The Wages of Flynn" are rather limp extensions of the same material. The melodic portions are often extremely sparse and emotionless, completely unmemorable at the conclusion of the work. The composer's surprisingly lousy thematic narrative totally disintegrates as the film progresses. Aside from the two themes, a minor third alternation represents the mischief generally. Absent engrossing themes, cues like "My Memory, My Memory" are so cold that you can't root for any character, emulating the same issue that was to come in the composer's Let Him Go a few years later. It's almost as if Giacchino gets enveloped by the need to express brutality and misses other emotional aspects of the tale. The first half of "Absolution Presents Itself" makes for a dissatisfying climax, and that cue's resolution offers no real peace, which might be the point. It just quietly fades away on album.

The main theme of Bad Times at the El Royale repeatedly struggles to ascend out of its own misery. Darkly keyboarded at 0:11 into "The Suite at the El Royale," its deep saxophone, percussion, and piano rhythms lead into the theme at 2:35, and massive horn and trombone menace stomps through the idea in almost unrecognizable form in that suite's midsection. The idea dances around the edges in "A Room With an Entrez-Vous" while its opening notes guide the driving action in the middle of "When Push Comes to Hoover" on piano. Barely intact in the chords of the disillusioned "Darlene-Eyed Monster," the main theme tingles early in "I Spy With My Little FBI" on guitar and is badly deconstructed in "You Can't Flynn 'em All," but it disappointingly has no functional impact on the rest of the score. Meanwhile, the composer's salvation theme is a religiously transcendent identity for strings and choir. It takes a while to emerge at 1:06 into "The Suite at the El Royale," doing so fully at 1:43 on electric guitar and joined by strings for a pretty moment. In that suite, it follows the massive bravado for the main theme at 3:55, leading into angelic choral take for the remainder of the cue, a mode that oddly sounds like nothing else in the score. This secondary theme faintly informs the cyclical phrasing at the start of "It's Ms. You to You" and tries to earn some sympathy on piano and cello in "My Memory, My Memory" but doesn't succeed. It unsuccessfully attempts to interrupt the action material in "The Doors of Deception," opens "Voyeur in So Much Trouble" with a moment of lament on electric cello, and becomes lonely at the outset of "Roulette the Chips Fall." As something of a muted relief, the salvation theme returns to warmer tones after a minute in "Absolution Presents Itself," and strings present some solace at the cue's end. The brass backing here is nice but not enough to really carry the moment, especially with a very short and somewhat ineffective choral reprise at the end of the long cue. Ultimately, Bad Times at the El Royale is a frustrating score that could have been so much better than it is. Almost all the highlights of the score are in the 8-minute "The Suite at the El Royale," the remainder offering a few unsustained snippets of interest. The horrifically dry ambience of the recording sucks much of the life out of it, especially in "The Wages of Flynn." If any score needed a bass saxophone to growl with some reverb like in Robert Rodriguez's Sin City from 2005, it would have been this one. Instead, you get a somewhat distinct thriller style with very little substance.  **   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Michael Giacchino reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.27 (in 54 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.06 (in 26,433 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.

Total Time: 74:45