The formula seems perfect: Take a director pedigreed in Oscar-nominated period pieces like "Atonement" and "Pride and Prejudice" and give him two Oscar-nominated performers in Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx for a remarkable true story. Sounds like a surefire candidate for Best Picture right?
Maybe.
Robert Downey Jr. plays LA Times columnist Steve Lopez, a brash constantly put-upon man in a newspaper industry that's axing veteran writers left and right. He finds an idea for a story in Nathaniel Ayers, a disturbed homeless man who also happens to be a musical prodigy playing for passing cars on a busy street.
The problem with the Soloist is that while Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx's performances are great, the film itself seems to be pulled in a lot of different directions. One minute it's an ode to the love of music and the next it's a portrait of a gifted but troubled genius before finally becoming a meditation on the issue of homelessness in America.
Any one of these topics would have worked on their own, but together the film feels cluttered and a little unfocused. It's through no fault of director Joe Wright, whose delicate touches are refreshing in a film that could've just hammered the audience with overwrought symbolism. The screenwriter Susannah Grant had a lot to work with from Lopez' book of the same name and it feels like she tried to hit all of the high notes.
While it's not really important that the film gets an Oscar nod like the rest in Wright's stable, the film has a good message, if only a little messy in getting its point across.
Grade: B+
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