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Soloist, The
EMAILPRINTDreamWorks Pictures (Paramount)
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 33 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 41 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama
Written by: Susannah Grant
Directed by: Joe Wright
Release Date:
Theatrical: April 24, 2009
DVD: August 4, 2009
Running Time: 105 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: PG-13 for thematic elements, some drug use and language
Starring Jamie Foxx, Robert Downey Jr., Catherine Keener, Tom Hollander, and Lisa Gay Hamilton
In The Soloist, an emotionally soaring drama about the redemptive power of music, journalist Steve Lopez discovers Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, a former classical music prodigy, playing his violin on the streets of L.A. As Lopez endeavors to help the homeless man find his way back, a unique friendship is formed, one that transforms both their lives. (Paramount)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Mr. Wright and his colleagues have made a movie with a spaciousness of its own, a brave willingness to explore such mysteries of the mind and heart as the torture that madness can inflict, and the rapture that music can confer. Bravo to all concerned.
Read Full Review >Empire Dan Jolin
Intelligent and uncompromising, with knock-out performances from Downey Jr. and Foxx .
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx are on fire in the lead roles: They're both charismatic as hell without sacrificing any of the emotional honesty necessary for you to believe that these movie stars are a scruffy reporter and a mentally ill musician.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
The Soloist does have the courage to be true to the real Ayers' fate at last, after the exaggerations end. And the smart, hard-working Foxx and Downey ensure that their scenes all stay grittily honest.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Connie Ogle
Downey gives a nervy, riveting performance in The Soloist.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
Isn't so much a story of perseverance and musical triumph as it is of despair, acceptance, and social commitment. The movie's a call to arms: We are our brothers' keepers, it says, and our brothers are in terrible shape.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
It's all a bit shapeless, yet made with sincerity and taste, and the two actors seize your sympathy.
Read Full Review >Premiere Rob Calvert
The Soloist is based upon a true story, so it lacks some of the clichés that you might find in other made-up tales.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
In the end, The Soloist isn't about BIG MOMENTS, it's about the grace notes, the kind that stay with you.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
Catherine Keener is also believable and sympathetic as Lopez's editor and former wife. But the film's power comes down to the strength of the two superb lead performances.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach
Foxx is magnificent, taking a role that could be exorbitantly showy (actors playing the mentally disabled tend to forget the word "restraint") and turning in a performance that's controlled and mesmerizing.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Perry Seibert
This kind of movie quickly falls apart if the actors overplay the inherent sadness of the situation, and thankfully the stellar cast never makes that mistake.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
The film works best when it focuses on the touching, crazymaking relationship between the two men.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
Hollywood loves the heroics of good intentions, but this movie is just as interested in the road to hell.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker David Denby
I don't know if Beethoven and a sympathetic newspaper reporter can redeem a messy American city, but this movie makes a plausible case for so fervent a dream.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
You can't help but feel a connection to Downey and Foxx and, to a lesser degree, a rooting interest in the story. But try as Wright might, he never figures out a way to bring us in -- much less manipulate us -- cinematically.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
This is the story of a complicated and fraught friendship, and I'm not sure Wright and his collaborators figured out how much Hollywood baloney and how much naturalistic grunge to apply to it.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
The problem with The Soloist is that, while Wright shows admirable restraint in dramatizing the interaction between the two principals and does not fall into the trap of following a "movie of the week" formula about mental illness, there is little emotional resonance in the story.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
The tone of The Soloist is wildly uneven. Though unsparing and unsentimental when framing the principals, Wright is hyperbolic when depicting the agitation of the mentally ill and the soothing rapture of music.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
The Soloist has all the elements of an uplifting drama, except for the uplift.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
The film is imperfect, periodically if unsurprisingly sentimental, overly tidy and often very moving.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Tasha Robinson
The result feels cluttered, overcooked, and underfelt.
Read Full Review >Slate Dana Stevens
It's a handsomely mounted spectacle with moments of bravura acting that nonetheless feels labored and dull.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
For all its sensitivity to the horrors of mental illness, The Soloist ends up as a fairly canned piece of work.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
As a drama, The Soloist is stuck before it starts.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
Like the prototypical "Shine," this is a film that romanticizes mental illness.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Ella Taylor
Foxx and Downey's disciplined duet come close to redeeming The Soloist from its visual excesses, but Wright leaves us with a parting shot of the dancing homeless that shamelessly exploits the very people he means to champion.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
With all the hallmarks of a prestige picture, chief among them a great cast and creative crew and an "important" message, The Soloist plays its tune with a frequently heavy hand.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
Has moments of power and imagination, but the overworked style and heavy socially conscious bent exude an off-putting sense of self-importance, making for a picture that's more of a chore than a pleasure to sit through.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
The movie is a noble enterprise, and Downey is stupendous as usual, but Joe Wright's direction is too slick to elicit much feeling.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Joe Neumaier
It's hard to talk about The Soloist without falling into cliches, because this well-meaning but ham-handed drama is full them.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
By consistently and relentlessly overplaying everything, by settling for standard easy emotions when singular and heartfelt was called for, by pushing forward when they should have pulled back, director Joe Wright and screenwriter Susannah Grant have made the story mean less, not more. Instead of enhancing The Soloist's appeal, they have come close to eliminating it.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.1 (out of 10) based on 41 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
k S. gave it a9:
Deeply moving film, made more so by knowing Downey's life story, so as a background to what we watch, we know that the actor had to face comparably difficult inner demons. Very strong performances.
Kevin V. gave it a2:
Downey Jr. is excellent, and the story is interesting, but The Soloist is plagued by excessive cliques and an overall lack of purpose. It's a shame to see such a great cast go to waste.
Dia C gave it a9:
I knew nothing about this film before I saw it, so it caught me completely off guard and, quite unexpectedly, moved me deeply. Brilliantly understated acting by both Foxx and Downey complemented some truly extroardinary scenes of homeless life in LA that delivered a punch to my solar plexus like Dante's Inferno. Every scene in the film rang true, INCLUDING (although those with less experience with the mentally ill might disagree) the scenes in which Nathaniel was suddenly less than gracious. At the end, I was left with a feeling that although the story might revolve around Ayers, the true journey it depicts is actually that of Steve Lopez and his awakening from a bitter, sardonic anything-for-a-story newspaperman to a kinder, more sensitive human being with a solid awareness regarding the plight of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Outstanding work! I definitely look forward to reading the book.
Ryan S gave it a9:
A very sad movie about a schizophrenic musician and the reporter who writes about him. Seems quite authentic and the acting is great.
Jay H. gave it a3:
I despise these artsy fartsy pretentious films that go overboard on style and light on substance. It's overdone, overrated, overacted, overlong and after thirty minutes was over this glossy rubbish.
Ming V. gave it a0:
Turgid, chaotic, tedious .. I do not even find Foxx's acting anything decent as well, just like a kid playing a mental illness person. It is supposed to be a film about a music genius however the use of music is nowhere near ingenious.
Brent P. gave it a10:
Beautifully filmed and a wonderful story. Simply worth seeing. A story worth telling.
