The Soloist

I avoided watching this movie because I figured that it would be too depressing. I was pleasantly surprised with the impact of the movie. Though I shouldn't have been since most of Robert Downy Jr. work that I have seen I have enjoyed.

I used to work swing shift at a convenience store just a few blocks away from the state mental hospital. We had a lot of mentally ill people come into the store. Most of them smoked but couldn't afford a pack of cigarettes so the boss started selling cigarettes individually. We just had to put a health warning on the box that we kept them in. Ten cents a piece and they were usually generics at the time they sold for around a buck a pack. If it wasn't cigarettes they were after it was the cheapest booze available at the time.

Mad Dog 20/20 and Schlitz 40 oz bottles were the preferred drink of choice there. Unless it was a couple of kids trying to get away with a twelve pack of budweiser. Some of the customers were more memorable than others. There was one gentleman who always came in for Mad Dog and two cigarettes. He was usually polite but the stench of stale alcohol and cigarettes just permeated the air anywhere within ten feet from him. I am sure he was homeless but at eighteen I figured it wasn't my place to ask about that or his mental condition. I also wouldn't have known what to do about either issue in any case. The best I could do was to be polite but firm with the customers when the situation called for it.

Another was a female that would come in for between one and five cigarettes depending on how much change she could scrounge together. She wasn't always nice and in fact could be downright fractious. Her mental illness was obvious but I think looking back at it that she lived in a group home like my mother ended up in. She was always clean but again the pervasive odor of stale cigarettes was always there.

So other than my experiences with my mom I had had previous experiences associating with people with obvious mental illness and hadn't really seen anything positive result.

Back to the movie review:

Robert Downy Jr. and Jamie Foxx star in this extremely moving movie. Mr. Foxx's portrayal of Nathanial Ayer was so on spot that I found myself cringing in several places. The plight of the homeless, just like racism or any other issue, is very emotional and you can ignore it right up until the moment that a personal face is put to it. If a movie like this can make more people look at both the mentally ill and homeless people in a different light that I would say it has achieved it's goal. The scene where Lopez gives Nathanial the bass and Nathanial plays it off to the side of traffic and then you see the birds fly up is both visually and audibly effective in touching the soul.

I strongly recommend this movie to anyone that likes either of these actors or is in the mood for a very nicely down drama.

You can rent it from your local video store, redbox, or netflix. I have included a link to Amazon.com below. I find that if I want to purchase a dvd or book Amazon has the best prices and I have never had a problem with their customer service.