Special Notes:

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After a choice series of kinetic action films this year – A Good Day to Die Hard [M] and World War Z being the biggies – the opportunity to score something less conventional must have seemed like a relief, because unlike his prior work, The Wolverine is more reliant on slow building cues with just a handful of genuine action set-pieces.

It’s a welcome change, because Wolverine shows off Beltrami’s knack for crafting an understated score that’s still a compelling work because it maintains a steady dramatic drive. Based around a two-note motif which morphs in and out of slight expansions, plus the odd longer version, the score has deft instrumental transitions (the shift from twanging metal to soothing flutes in “Two Handed” is very, very sleek) and a markedly different set of orchestral colours for what's supposed to be another comic book movie.

Whether influenced by the success of the Dark Knight [M] reboot – in terms of the franchise’s composers being given full permission to indulge in minimalism and avoid the clichés of standard heroic and villain themes – Wolverine’s quietness allows for uniquely rendered glassy sounds, ambient echoes, and a strangely mournful tone, which Beltrami delivers with pensive strings and dreadfully unhappy solos (“The Offer”).

Kinetic material isn’t performed by massive brass and strings but a unique selection of percussion that embraces things lightly metallic, wooden, and glassy with just slight synthetic additions, and when the orchestra makes a full appearance, it’s only for brief moments before Beltrami shifts back to his selective palette, as with the grungy string bass and harmonica in “Abduction.”

One also senses some slight homages in the score, such as the subtle string material in "Threnody for Nagasaki" recalling Jerry Goldsmith’s The Omen (1976), and the harmonica which, when paired with an ongoing repetition of the two-note theme in the closing “Whole Step Haiku” recalls an Ennio Morricone spaghetti western.

As with all of Beltrami’s work, Wolverine is beautifully orchestrated and engineered, although listeners will be a little perplexed by the slightly lower volume which seems like a deliberate cheat so the bass material in cues like “Ninja Quiet” reverberate quite loudly, or the tension in “Kantana Surgery” keeps restarting after orchestral emphasis on shrill strings, drums, and a great backbeat combo in the snarling finale. Either way, play this loud, especially with a subwoofer.

© 2013 Mark R. Hasan