Cliff Martinez’s stylistic interests in moody music for neon-drenched noir violence continue to flourish throughout the score for
Only God Forgives, which marks Martinez’s second time working with director Nicolas Winding Refn on the music for a Ryan Gosling-led crime thriller (the other being 2011’s
Drive). While Martinez’s score for
Drive was heavy on its atmospheric elements to complement the stylish and sleek color palette that
Drive boasted,
Only God Forgives is far from in the full-throttled fast-lane as
Drive’s soundtrack was. This is hallucinogenic scenery-setting music that sheds the high-octane speed of
Drive, but remains gripping in its own way. It almost entirely relies on ominous builds and leering noise that brings to mind images of pitch black nights and dank alleyways. Although as cold and corrosive as
Only God Forgives persists on being, it really can’t help but feel a little aimless and repetitive outside of the film. While they suitably do their job well at providing the soundtrack to the appropriate scenes in the film, these tracks all rise, and rise and then release without amounting to much, and in that way they really warrant no returning listens aside from casting a projection of the film’s saturated tone.
Drive projected much of the same visual effects from its music, but that score had a brisk pace coursing through its veins that felt like it was racing listeners to exciting places, while
Only God Forgives remains consistently subdued for 17 tracks despite the predictable noisy tension in the midst of each track. Even the songs “Can’t Forget” and “Falling in Love,” that see Martinez collaborating with vocalists, fail to get the blood pumping and come off as uneven among the soundtrack’s score pieces. In a way it’s an experience much like watching the waves of an ocean while far out at sea; you see the waves form and cause commotion but you’re too far from the shoreline to see the crash they’ll eventually amount to. Though they make for memorable ambiance and demonstrate Martinez's knack for precisely capturing the stillness among the chaos, without these mood pieces developing into explosive cuts that would have aided the movie's many brutal fighting sequences, the heft of the compositions on the
Only God Forgives soundtrack will each produce an identical effect for listeners.
