Release Date – 4/24/09
The Soloist is the true story of newspaper journalist Steve Lopez who discovers Nathaniel Ayers, a homeless, schizophrenic, former Julliard student on the streets of Los Angeles. He decides the man has a story to tell and starts becoming close to him and even helping him have a better life. He wants him to play music again and be happy. It is directed by Joe Wright (Atonement, Pride & Prejudice) and based on the novel by the real Steve Lopez. The movie is a decent story but I never really got into it. I wasn’t attached to anything in the plot that would make me really care about the characters or what the final outcome was. It was setup to be an Oscar worthy movie but it falls way short.
Robert Downey Jr and Jamie Foxx do a good job and the only interesting scenes are when they are interacting with each other. Jamie Foxx is a loose cannon. Sometimes he’s friendly and seems normal when other times he is on the edge of violent behavior. And for some reason he wears ridiculous outfits. It just seemed too forced to me. Jamie Foxx went into the movie thinking he could get another Oscar when he should have realized the script wasn’t the greatest. And like I said, he did pretty well but nothing spectacular. Downey Jr’s Steve Lopez seemed to fall flat only because his back story is never really told. He’s divorced from his boss (Catherine Keener) but they are still always together. He has a son with her but he’s never seen on screen and that story never really unfolds. Basically they try to show you how obsessed with Foxx’s character he becomes but it doesn’t work out well because we never really care about Steve Lopez in the first place. I think with a little more back story, instead of rushing into his obsession with Ayers, we would have cared more where the story was going.
Joe Wright used some weird elements in his directing. The flashbacks to Ayers’ childhood were edited oddly to really let you know it’s a flashback. And when he starts hearing voices, the audience does too by pumping in some whispers into the soundtrack. Its pretty creepy actually but an odd choice for this type of drama. One scene in particular that I didn’t like was when Ayers is listening to an orchestra, he closes his eyes and we are treated to a 5 minute Windows Media Player Visualization. Just color flashes on the screen to go with the music. It was so out of place. And there were a lot of instrumental scenes where people are just playing music for extended periods of time. I felt like I was watching the filming of a concert instead of an actual drama. So the negatives definitely outweigh the positives but the main positive is that Jamie Foxx and Robery Downey Jr are terrific actors who just fell into a script that seemed too forced for Oscar bait. The scenes with them together are enough to save this from a whack but I could have easily waited to catch this on DVD. Save it for 3 months down the line on a rainy day.
IMDB – 7.5/10
Rotten Tomatoes – 57%
Movie Wiseguys – 6/10