Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr in The Soloist (DreamWorks 2009)

HAVING established his reputation with impeccable literary adaptations Pride & Prejudice and Atonement, British director Joe Wright tries his hand at something very different with The Soloist.

Based on a true story, it charts the bond that developed between a Los Angeles journalist and a homeless man who had once been a promising music student. It is the type of material that seems tailor-made for Oscar attention, but Wright’s dry, understated approach steers it away from tearjerking melodrama.

Robert Downey Jr gives a typically dynamic performance as Los Angeles Times journalist Steve Lopez. His life is spent looking for the kind of human interest stories that will provide him with a good column. He becomes intrigued by a homeless man who fills the air of Los Angeles with plaintive renditions of Beethoven on a two-string violin.

The man is Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx), a former cello student at Julliard whose life has been blighted by schizophrenia.

Maintaining a sense of restraint throughout, The Soloist traces the way Lopez plays Good Samaritan to Ayers, and then begins to question whether he is helping him or exploiting him. Is this a genuine friendship or a just a means of filling his column?

Wright and cinematographer Seamus McGarvey relish the chance to explore the hidden corners of Los Angeles, but you begin to suspect they become a little too distracted by an interest in the plight of the city’s 90,000 homeless people and the work of the Lamp Community.

It is possible that the drama was getting in the way of what might have made a great documentary. Refusing to wallow in the sentimentality of the story is admirable but the result is a rather restrained, worthy social drama, even with the convincing star power on display

Selected nationwide release

Director: Joe Wright
Cast: Robert Downey Jr, Jamie Foxx, Catherine Keener, Tom Hollander, Lisagay Hamilton
Screenwriter: Susannah Grant based on the book by Steve Lopez
Certificate: 12A
Running time: 116mins
Country: USA
Year: 2009

© Allan Hunter, 2009

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