Since he emerged with his score for Scream in 1996, composer Marco Beltrami has specialized in contributing film music that is just a cut above the projects on which he works, most of which have been horror, science fiction, or action pictures. That has tended to get him more work and more prestigious assignments, culminating in his Academy Award nomination for 2007's 3:10 to Yuma, a big-budget Western remake with major stars Russell Crowe and Christian Bale; the same year, he also did the long-awaited fourth installment in the Die Hard series, Live Free or Die Hard, a plum assignment. With Max Payne, Beltrami is back to high-profile science fiction, a film based on a video game and starring Mark Wahlberg. And typically he does more than just come up with a bunch of action cues. His assistant, Buck Sanders, who tends to handle synthesizer sounds, has been promoted to co-composer for the effort (another associate, Dennis Smith, is listed in small print on the last page of the CD booklet with the ambiguous credit "additional music"), and they seem to have split their duties on a score that is reminiscent of some of Hollywood heavyweight Hans Zimmer's efforts in that it combines a full orchestra with electronic elements, mostly restricted to percussion. The slow, ponderous beginning ("Max Attacks"), achieved with a detuned piano, introduces a series of compositions that are often slower, quieter, and more contemplative than might have been expected. Generally, even when accompanying the usual chases and battles on the screen, Beltrami and Sanders let the synthesized percussion gallop while the strings play at half the speed. Things do rev up in such cues as "Factoring Max" and "Vote for Dennis," which display the influence of both Richard Wagner and Metallica. And that's the idea, of course, a contemporary combination of familiar dramatic orchestral effects and the feel of heavy metal. Beltrami, a student of Jerry Goldsmith, knows both Hollywood traditions and the demands of the contemporary action genre. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide