A good film but we saw it already as Shine

Rating: 6/10 (2 March 2011)

A journalist searching for a story comes across a homeless schizophrenic, Nathaniel, who, as it turns out, is also a classically-trained musician. The journalist befriends him, allowing him to play his music, while writing articles about him that force a showdown of sorts in their relationship.
Based on a true story, this film pushes most of the right emotional button, but suffers from an unavoidable comparison with Shine. Bromance versus romance aside, there is too much overlap in the stories, even if they are true, robbing The Soloist of any freshness. Foxx is excellent, albeit in that actor-after-Oscar mode that seems to draw certain performers to play mentally diminished characters. Downey is as charismatic as ever, if a little more clipped than usual. The extras are in fact real homeless people with real mental infirmities - faced with that, Downey seems to have opted to play it a little more sombre than usual. At one point, he reacts to a stream of consciousness by one of the homeless people and we glimpse the man rather than the character. It is a fascinating moment - you realise that no matter how hard films try to approach realism, the real world will always prove more surprising.
One small triumph for me is the moment where Nathaniel gets to hear a full orchestra for the first time. He closes his eyes, and we are treated to an abstract light show representing his emotional elation to the music. Director Wright apparently shot that sequence with a whisky glass and a household lamp. In our CGI-infested times, that is refreshing.
In sum, not a bad film, and possibly more if you have not seen Shine.