It takes admirable steps to avoid the sentimental pitfalls that tend to accompany all such redemptive Hollywood tales, but it still leaves you with a weird aftertaste.
Comment
09/25/09
The Soloist (2009)
55
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:181
Fresh:99
Rotten:82
Average Rating:5.9/10
Consensus: Though it features strong performances by its lead players, a lack of narrative focus prevents The Soloist from hitting its mark.
Theatrical Release:Apr 24, 2009 Wide
Box Office: $31,670,931
Synopsis: Director Joe Wright (ATONEMENT, PRIDE & PREJUDICE) brings the true story of an unlikely friendship to life in THE SOLOIST. An award-winning columnist with the Los Angeles Times, Steve Lopez (Robert... [More]
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Robert Downey, Catherine Keener, Tom Hollander
Director: Joe Wright
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Reviews for The Soloist
Disappointing, over-long and over-directed Oscar-bait drama that's further hampered by a trying-too-hard performance from Jamie Foxx, though the always-excellent Robert Downey Jr. ensures that it remains just about watchable.
09/24/09
When [Catherine] Keener's Mary Weston suggests that Lopez may be exploiting Ayers, it is tempting to wonder how the filmmakers would react to the same accusation.
09/11/09
click to read the full review
09/09/09
There's something about The Soloist's aura of religiosity that seems simplistic. An unsatisfying, jarring note, in this otherwise hopeful, triumphant story.
09/03/09
What's altogether surprising is its refusal to romanticise either of its troubled or flawed central characters.
09/03/09
The facts offer potential for a heart-rending and emotional movie experience, but Wright (director of Atonement and Pride and Prejudice) goes Hollywood with his first American feature.
09/02/09
Playing up to music and disabled character clichés, the filmmakers seem to be Oscar fishing with this almost-there drama.
09/02/09
There are fabulous performances from both Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr, it’s just that the power of the story of these two men gets lost in the mix.
09/02/09
Somewhere in here, there is a simple, powerful story. If only Wright and Grant had been able to find it.
09/01/09
The title is a lie--this really a tandem act, unthinkable without either of its two central parts.
08/31/09
Its power may owe more to Beethoven and Bach than the skills of the filmmakers, but it can be recommended to all who like a strange and moving story.
08/30/09
Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx are highly convincing. Problem is, the film lets them down. It is not as powerful or moving as it could -- and should -- have been.
08/30/09
This film isn't as much about homelessness as about helplessness - and how some people are able not necessarily to overcome it, but to manage it. And how people like Steve Lopez, unintentionally help themselves when they try to help others. That's a great
08/28/09
As a film, even in the hands of Atonement director Joe Wright and with talents such as the amazing Downey Jnr, Foxx and Keener, our emotional experience is strangely muted
08/28/09
Get me rewrite
08/25/09
Click to read the article
08/19/09
Inspired by the touching book -- by Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez -- Downey, Foxx and Wright make appealing, if just short of beautiful, music.
08/14/09
While I admire filmmakers who navigate material like this without sentimentality, this film stands back just a bit too much and leaves us feeling like distant observers.
08/13/09
[This] bromantic drama...becomes as frustratedly impotent as Lopez feels, and as chokingly symbolic as Ayers looks with an Uncle Sam top hat on his head and an American flag in his shopping cart. [Blu-ray]
08/02/09
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