Goodbye Solo (2008)
Average Rating: 7.8/10
Reviews Counted: 102
Fresh: 97 | Rotten: 5
An original and thoughtful human drama, Goodbye Solo looks at relationships and loneliness while proving director Ramin Bahrani's is an important American voice.
Average Rating: 8/10
Critic Reviews: 32
Fresh: 31 | Rotten: 1
An original and thoughtful human drama, Goodbye Solo looks at relationships and loneliness while proving director Ramin Bahrani's is an important American voice.
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Average Rating: 3.9/5
User Ratings: 4,321
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Movie Info
A Senegalese taxi driver living in Winston-Salem, NC, makes the decision to befriend a depressive passenger with a tragic plan in director Ramin Bahrani's deeply humanistic drama. Solo (Souléymane Sy Savané) is a cab driver who believes that everyone should be engaged and concerned with one another, and thus lacks the self-conscious view of relationships so prevalent in North American society. When a 70-year-old passenger named William (Red West) hails Solo's cab and he books him for another
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Cast
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Souleymane Sy Savane
Solo -
Red West
William -
Diana Franco Galindo
Alex -
Carmen Levya
Quiera -
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Mamadou
Mamadou
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All Critics (102) | Top Critics (32) | Fresh (97) | Rotten (5)
Utterly engrossing dual-character study, unfolding with a serene disregard for indie quirkiness, Goodbye Solo radiates authenticity.
Top CriticAn endearing character piece shot through with beauty and humility in which, thanks to his leads' open, sometimes vulnerable performances, tolerance and respect take precedence.
It is both funny and sad, placid and provocative and, above all, hopeful and despairing.
Every moment -- including a physically exhausting climactic scene that both confounds expectations and compounds the film's poetic majesty -- is evidence of a masterpiece.
What happens in Goodbye Solo meets the complex demands of good classic storytelling.
The lack of melodrama coupled with moments of quiet celebration make Goodbye Solo a more uplifting tale than one might expect with such a less-than-joyous premise.
As a diary of travels in multiculti America, it's in the same bag as The Visitor, for better or worse.
A marvel of pathos and pace
Un entrañable y sutil retrato humano, sostenido por el choque y la complementariedad entre dos caracteres muy distintos. Excelente elección de actores que parecen interpretarse a sí mismos.
Hopeful about the rewards that can be mined from the broadening of perspective that comes with getting to know someone outside of your usual social zone.
One of the year's best films!
An odd-couple relationship fuels a slow-burning but ultimately moving emotional and spiritual journey in Ramin Bahrani's third feature.
The problem trying to deal with a self-destructive pessimist is you can never convince them that tomorrow might just be a better day.
Goodbye Solo asks far more questions than it answers, yet there's something in the tender humanity of the journey that seems to matter much more.
Working to a spare screenplay, Bahrani offers none of the usual clues about either the cabbie's surprising determination to prevent the tragedy or the old man's reasons for suicide. This doesn't always help the quiet drama.
The final sequence up in the mountains is particularly affecting.
Subtle and unflinching, this is genuine and charming.
The strange power of those final moments - at once tender, tragic and triumphant - grant this unassuming drama about saying goodbye to Solo the status of a minor masterpiece played in an appropriately minor key.
You get the sense that writer-director Ramin Bahrani is mystified by America's abandonment of its elderly, and there's a whiff of disapproval in his treatment of this theme, but it's only a whiff.
An instantly gripping, funny, quietly persuasive drama that held me from the first frames.
If cinematic form follows cinematic function then Goodbye Solo is a perfect Mercedes of a movie. It is comprised of a quietly purring but powerful narrative engine.
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