In 2011, Cliff Martinez helped popularize the 80s synth and electropop revivalist subgenres through his work on Drive. While this remains his most popular work, Only God Forgives is perhaps his strongest score to date. It fuses elements from Drive, earlier scores, and ones Martinez has never before used.
Where Drive was akin to an electronic dreamlike fairytale, Only God Forgives proves its foil as a neon nightmare. There are no calm moments. Every song has an overwhelming feeling of dread, feeding into the film’s sense of unease and violence. Martinez accomplishes this relentlessness in the more ambient passages that serve as the backdrop for the film’s bipolar transitions between quiet and chaos, as well as in the driving, pounding electronic songs like “Wanna Fight,” the Hotline Miami-esque “Chang and Sword,” and the two Thai karaoke interludes.
The most intriguing, and effective, aspect of Only God Forgives is the Thai influence. Martinez, a former drummer, prominently features East Asian percussion to build intensity and a sense of alienation. These same feelings, appropriately, plague the main character. The most inspired choices, however, are two karaoke songs that the film’s Thai stars perform and a longing, forlorn (and somewhat obscure) track by Proud, a 90s Thai string-pop/indie rock band. Taken together, Martinez manages to combine Eastern and Western musical influences organically and deftly, rather than obviously or tritely, creating a fascinating and unique score.
