The Soloist

At the end of last year there was buzz for this new film ‘The Solist’. It was supposed to be released in time for the Oscars as it was expected that the two leads would no doubt get nominated. Then at the last minute the film’s released date was changed to early this year. Most felt that the studio had lost faith in the film and I can kind of see why.
I’m not sure if the reason was because it had an almost similar theme to another film released last year, ‘Slumdog Millionaire’. Both films depict the sad side of humanity in their depiction of poor people. The differences being that ‘Slumdog’ is set in far off India and not on Hollywood’s door step as shown in ‘Soloist’. Also ‘Slumdog’ has a much happier ending (sorry if this is a spoiler).
Personally I have mixed feelings about the film. One the on hand there are some great moments in the film and it has an excellent performance from one of the leads (which I’ll mention later), but as whole the film did not work for me. I understand that Steve was trying to help Nathanial but there was nothing new to the story to make it stand out from all the other films we have seen about people trying to help someone down on their luck. Yes Nathanial’s mental illness is a point of difference but it was not enough for me to make the film interesting. I know the point of the film was to show how the friendship of these two men changed their lives but it was not done in a very interesting way. This is especially disappointing considering the director. Joe Wright did a wonderful job with his last two films, especially ‘Atonement’, but this film is very plain and ordinary compared to that. As mentioned above the film is quite graphic in its depiction of the homeless in Los Angeles. The film becomes a bit too preachy when we get endless shots of homeless people on the street and how bad things are for them.
Jamie Foxx is a brilliant actor and this film proves it once again. I thought he was amazing in this film. I also find it really ironic that after his ‘retard’ speech in ‘Tropic Thunder’ last year that Robert Downey Jnr. did this film. Maybe that had something to do with the studio’s decision to shift the film’s release, so as to distance it from people’s memory of what Robert said. Robert is great in everything he does but I didn’t find hi performance here anything all that great. Jamie had the real meaty work here and kind of over shadowed Robert.The story for me was not cinematic enough to make it worth seeing at the cinema. Maybe wait to see it on DVD. It is worth seeing for Jamie Foxx’s performance but not much else.