Review of The Soloist (2009) by Dan K — 17 Oct 2010

Ah, The Soloist. Yet another example of me being drawn in the by the great trailers, only to be disappointed in the actual film.

The main misgiving I had with the movie? JOE WRIGHT'S DIRECTION. Gah! It made me want to pull my hair out. It served to give me a very detached feeling while watching much of this movie as the pacing just zips along from scene to scene, cutting away many times when we think we're going to have a nice character building moment. Many times it jumps back into Nathaniel Ayer's (Jamie Foxx) past without warning, then cuts back into present day. The lack of focus ends up causing to the film to lose much of it's impact, but it is still quite a sobering experience (though it could have floored me potentially). Still, having a very hard time getting into the film for probably about 3/4 of the way is certainly not a good thing. The movie would have been a much more worthwhile experience had I not had so much trouble getting into it.

What carries the film is the acting from the leads. I can see Foxx garnering another Oscar nod for his performance, and Downey's performance as Steve Lopez is fantastic as well, although not on the level of Foxx's. Foxx through himself headlong into this role and is one of the few brightly shining elements of the film; the others being the beautiful classical music and the cinematography. Being a musician myself, getting to hear the all the wonderful music was quite calming, given the heavy, even creepy nature of the film.

Despite the fact that Joe Wright was the wrong director to handle this film, the movie is still a good one that is well worth seeing for the actors' performances. It's saddening to think that it could have been a film I could have recommended highly in good conscience had been in different, more focused hands.