The Soloist (Joe Wright, 2009)

With: Robert Downey Jr, Jamie Foxx, Catherine Keener, Tom Hollander

Plot: LA Times writer Steve Lopez (Downey Jr) is struggling for interesting column ideas when he happens across Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx) a homeless probable schizophrenic with a talent for playing the violin and cello.

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This seems to think that all that's needed to be moving is for worthy things to be placed on the screen and fawned over by the actors. Mental illness! The transcendent power of music! It's watchable, but very tedious and Wright's attempts to visualise the beauty of music with screen-saver style flashing colours and extreme close ups of bows across strings are a bit embarassing really. He's an aesthetically restless director, always looking for creative ways to needlessly swoop around the environment and like his 'LOOK-AT-THIS!' tracking shot in Atonement's Dunkirk scene, such techniques don't add anything to what is intended to be a sombre story. Otherwise, everything is just going through the motions, with a typically romantic view of mental illness (it's implied that medicating Nathaniel would almost be akin to neutering him, or dimming his idiot savant magic) and some of the most pointless childhood flashbacks ever imagined (how did the crazy music lover come to be how he was? Well he loved music when he was younger, and one day went crazy. The end). It's mostly restrained enough, and the cast try their best, though Foxx has that overly intense sincerity, like Tom Cruise, which seems to cry out 'I'm really acting now!'. The one interesting scene is where Lopez's drunk wife (Keener) calls him on his supposedly altruistic exploitation of Nathaniel, but that's a much too complex notion to explore in such a cut and dry 'inspirational piece', so it's no surprise to see it quietly dismissed.

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