The Soloist (Review)

The Soloist

Directed By: Joe Wright
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Jamie Foxx


What’s It About

Steve Lopez, a writer for the LA Times, is desperate to find his next story. One sunny day while walking through LA, he runs into Nathaniel Ayers, a homeless musician who Lopez finds out through their conversation, was once a promising student at Juilliard School. An unlikely friendship begins and Lopez soon finds that his story has not only struck a chord in the lives of those who have read his column, but the scattered notes in his own life begin to align themselves to help him become a more complete melody.

Thoughts

When adapting a true story to the big screen, many liberties must be taken in order to hold the audience’s attention. This is done because, let’s face it, life really isn’t that exciting, or at least exciting enough to merit a whole film. Screenwriters normally throw away all the boring stuff and infuse the script with dramatic pieces that while they don’t hold true to the real events, they do normally cause the story to elevate enough to take us through the motions. Unfortunately for The Soloist, we have the opposite effect with screenwriters disregarding Nathaniel Ayers violent outbursts towards his colleagues and teachers while at Juilliard, and how shock therapy affected him, moments in his life that would have lifted the story as a whole and instead they add a fictional relationship between Lopez and his ex wife and a small performance that Ayers almost gives at Disney Hall.

While I enjoyed Joe Wright’s work on Pride and Prejudice and Atonement, here he just seems to be out of place. He tries to infuse artistic shots here and there, like his previous films, but what we get are just weird moments. There was one scene in particular where were transported into Ayers mind and “see” how the music plays out in his head, but what we get is something more like an acid trip of colors that stays on the screen for too long. There also seems to be a lack of direction when it comes to the style of the film. One moment it wants to be an indie film and the next a big Hollywood film, and then an artsy film, never finding a balance.

There are good points to talk about. Downey and Foxx do a great job portraying Lopez and Ayers. These are two actors that know how to carry a scene and when you feel desperate to want to help Ayers and frustrated when you don’t see positive results, that’s all thanks to their talent of knowing how to make you believe in their characters. Foxx in particular was so good in fact, that I wish more time were spent on him. I was also pleasantly surprised to see Tom Hollander make an appearance as a character not donning a period piece costume like in most of his other films. Also, to be quite honest, even though it sounds like I’ve been bashing the film for the most part, I did enjoy myself. It’s just that walking away from this, I knew that it could have been so much more.

It’s really unfortunate that The Soloist did not stick to just the facts, because in a film of this nature, the facts was all this film needed.

Memorable Moment

Lopez is desperately trying to get Ayers to go to the Disney Music Hall but Ayers refuses to leave his cart with junk alone. In the next scene, Lopez’s ex wife is looking out the window, only to find Lopez running up the ramp that leads to Disney Hall all while pushing the cart!

FYI

Real homeless people were used as extras for the skid row scenes.

Score

5 out of 10