The Soloist

Directed by: Joe Wright

Written by: Susannah Grant (screenplay); Steve Lopez (book)










This movie sets out to tell the true story of journalist Steven Lopez (Downey) and his attempt to help rebuild the life of Nathaniel Ayers (Foxx), a dispossessed man who once had the opportunity to be one of the great cellists.  In that goal, it succeeds.

To it's credit, the movie does not reduce itself to sappiness.  There is a tendency in telling stories like this to gloss over the ending, to reveal some major change.  The struggling journalist learns the value of friendship and the need to help the homeless.  The musical vagrant returns to greatness at his instrument.  Instead, the ending is much more realistic.  There is no transcendent moment.  The characters have indeed grown, but the change is not monumental.  I appreciate that the filmmakers decided not to fit a trite conclusion onto the film - that was not the point.  They stayed loyal to the story (as far as I know it), even if that meant the conclusion does not satisfy in the usual sense.

My biggest disappointment in the movie was that I struggled to truly care about the characters.  They failed to come alive, but rather felt exactly like people playing out a story that had already been written.  I learned everything I needed to know about them from the trailer.  This is not the greatest performance by either of the leads, though, to their credit, I appreciate that both worked outside their usual character style and tried for something different.

"The Soloist" felt like a movie that had a lot of potential, but didn't live up to it in the way that it could have.  But maybe that's the point - the movie itself is about people not able to live up to expectations.  I'm not suggesting that the filmmakers intentionally produced a movie that fell short of goals, but rather that it is fitting that it occurred - whether intentional or not.  They tried for something different - to reveal something true, even if in their quest for veracity they opted not to resolve the problems of every character.