The Soloist is the kind of movie where you expect from the description alone it will be cheesy. After all, we've seen this story before (most notably in Shine). And shifting the release date from Oscar season to spring doesn't inspire confidence. But in fact, The Soloist does what it can to avoid oversentimentality, trying to be as realistic and evenhanded as possible. Still, as cheesy as those feel-good movies are, at least they make you feel something. By the end of The Soloist, I felt neutral.
The story's simple: newspaper reporter Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.) meets a schizophrenic homeless man who once studied at Julliard, Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx). He sees a story, and they become friends. These days, that kind of true-life set-up would seem more inclined to go for TV than theaters, but when you get two A-list actors to headline, theaters it is.
I doubt their performances would stand out in Oscar season, but both of the leads are very good. Downey Jr. takes a fairly underwritten role and makes him relatable and sympathetic. As for Foxx, it wasn't until around the three quarter mark I even remembered he had already done the musician biopic thing in Ray. Playing mentally ill is tough, but he certainly disappeared into the role.
So when the movie sticks with its two leads, it's at least got their acting strength to carry it. Unfortunately, the movie sporadically and inconsistently decides it needs to be more than the story of these two men, and that's where it most falters. Early signs that this might turn into an "issue movie" come when characters bemoan the death of the newspaper, followed soon after by video footage of Hurricane Katrina.
But the big "issue" here is homelessness in LA. Nathaniel lives in a community of fellow homeless people who don't really play into the story yet are very present. The way the camera focuses on their faces makes it all too clear this is about showing the other side of LA the movies don't cover. By the time director Joe Wright started shooting the homeless like the WWII soldiers in his previous film Atonement, I knew the issue had started getting in the way of the story.
That's not the only way Wright unsuccessfully tries to spice up this story. Perhaps uncomfortable with the rather conventional premise, Wright takes every opportunity to overdirect, which just doesn't fit the kind of movie this is. During a symphony, he treats us to a little laser light show to make us feel what Nathaniel feels. Worse is the way we hear the voices in Nathaniel's head, and instead of understanding schizophrenia, we feel like we're watching a movie-of-the-week.
If the movie has one major strength other than the acting, it's the music. The movie does a fantastic job at getting you to understand Nathaniel's love for music by providing so many beautiful opportunities to experience it. With top musicians and surround sound to amplify it, these musical segments are some of the movie's most enjoyable moments. But if you want to hear classical music, you can go to the symphony. If you want to see this movie, you can wait for DVD.
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