Unexpectedly deep, but lacks focus

Rating: 4/10 (24 April 2009)

Previews and marketing for The Soloist give a very different image of what the film actually is about. Watching the trailer, one would think, "Oh, here's another 'feel good white-guy- meets-black-guy movie where the black guy is sincere but troubled and the white guy wants to help him but can't relate to him and has a short temper but it's okay because in the end they both learn from each others' differences' with a musical backdrop thrown in just for artistic interest- lovely! Exactly what I need to watch to feel better on a Saturday evening!"
The reality is in fact the opposite- the story ends on a somber note, occasionally plunging into melodrama, but the 'feel-good' market is indeed misleading. This is a movie that wants, tries desperately, to touch on some very serious issues, but unfortunately causes itself to become undone as a movie.
The story revolves around an LA Times columnist named Steve Lopez who stumbles across n eccentric and mentally ill homeless musician, Nathaniel, who is a musical prodigy and a Julliard dropout. At first obsessed with the story, Steve inevitably becomes involved in Nathaniel's personal life while dealing with his own issues with his ex-wife and his job.
That's all you really need to know, but even if I wanted to try to explain it further, that would prove rather difficult because the film itself doesn't even really know what it's about- is it about finding the kindness to be someone's friend, the homeless crisis in LA, dealing with people with schizophrenia, pursuing your dreams, coming to terms with not living your dreams, or even more basic, is it about Nathaniel or is it about Steve? The movie doesn't know as it bombards you with as much information as you could possibly need to know about any of that, whether its via flashback sequences about Nathaniel's past, moments where "the voices" invade Nathaniel's head and freak him out, overly dramatic scenes involving policemen arresting homeless people, an excessive amount of really irrelevant time in Steve's office and about a head injury of his, and multiple musical montage scenes to Beethoven, one involving helicopter shots and pigeons, and another involving an uninterrupted three minutes of color splashing across the screen rhythmically.
With that said, it's very well-acted. When director Joe Wright isn't throwing as many different things together in the editing room as he possibly can, Robert Downery Jr. and Jamie Foxx put together a fantastic on-screen duo that actually manages to defy the clichés that one might expect. Jamie Foxx especially makes the character his own to the extent that he is almost unrecognizable, both in speech, mannerism, and physical appearance from anything else he's ever done. The two of them together make the film memorable and it is their lack of ability to understand one another that essential makes the best drama of the film. Without it, everything else going on in Steve's life- the quest for the next big story and the problems with the ex-wife, falls flat of any real dramatic significance.
The film wants to be so much. It wants to be so much so badly it feels like it doesn't even care if it's a movie at all. It has moments of ingenuity, but it could've been so much more powerful if it were just a story about either one man's love for music or one man's choice to change someone else's life rather than trying to throw as many different punches as possible.