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In the brief, pre-credits prelude to Brian Koppelman and David Levien's Solitary Man, autumnal car-dealership-owner Ben Kalman (Michael Douglas) is told that there is an abnormality on his EKG. As the doctor says he wants to order tests, Kalman drifts away, along with the sound of the doctor and the world around him. He is completely and utterly alone for the first time, perhaps in his entire life.
The film picks up six-and-a-half years later, wherein Kalman has divorced from his real-estate-queen wife (Susan Sarandon), distanced himself from his daughter (a very good Jenna Fischer) and taken up with sultry daddy's girl Jordan (Mary-Louise Parker) in the hopes of securing a dealership, his first since an embezzlement scam he perpetrated in the interim. In an odd way, things start to look up for Kalman when he hesitantly agrees to take Allyson (Imogen Poots), Jordan's daughter, on a trip to check out a college in Boston and ends up bedding her. This toss in the hay, or more precisely Allyson's public admission of it to her mother, spells the undoing of Kalman on almost all fronts, making a job working at a small diner in a college town for his buddy Jimmy (Danny DeVito) his most promising option.
These occurrences and the narrative trajectory of Solitary Man are not new nor are they approached from a particularly unique angle. The lensing, by the great German cinematographer Alwin H. Kuchlar, is efficient but rousing only in glimpses, as are Michael Penn's breezy score and Tricia Cooke's editing; Boston and New York have rarely looked so boring. But the general play-it-safe attitude that Koppelman and Levien show as technical directors belies their talent with actors and their meaty screenplay, which has a rare dedication to all its characters.
Best known for writing the scripts for Rounders and, most recently, The Girlfriend Experience, Koppelman and Levien have above all given Douglas his best role since his triumph in Curtis Hanson's Wonder Boys, not to mention his sleaziest since Wall Street or until Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. Kalman is a cad, unapologetic and self-legitimizing at every turn, but the womanizing, irresponsibility, and the generally nihilistic behavior would form caricature rather than character if it weren't for Douglas's immense charm, ability and wisdom. From asking his daughter to act like she's his wife to a terrifically awkward flirtation with the sweet girl (Olivia Thirlby) that is dating his young friend (Jesse Eisenberg), Douglas deploys and detonates his own bravado and the bravado of every ladies' man he's ever played; it's the closest he's gotten to his own Walt Kowalski.
The roles and scenes Eisenberg and Thirlby inhabit are generally superfluous, but then so is Kalman's climactic explanation of his behavior to his ex-wife. What slows down and dulls this otherwise refreshingly smart character study is the hope that Kalman's brutal outlook on life can be explained away or, more pointedly, that it is just a phase that the film needs him to get over. But Kalman is a psychologically dense character that is more fascinating when his actions go unanswered and his humanity is seen in glimmers rather than with the redemptive gestures that begin to pop up near the end of Solitary Man. The filmmaking is competent and watchable, though negligibly impersonal. But the role is suitable only for a titan, and that's exactly what it gets.
The film picks up six-and-a-half years later, wherein Kalman has divorced from his real-estate-queen wife (Susan Sarandon), distanced himself from his daughter (a very good Jenna Fischer) and taken up with sultry daddy's girl Jordan (Mary-Louise Parker) in the hopes of securing a dealership, his first since an embezzlement scam he perpetrated in the interim. In an odd way, things start to look up for Kalman when he hesitantly agrees to take Allyson (Imogen Poots), Jordan's daughter, on a trip to check out a college in Boston and ends up bedding her. This toss in the hay, or more precisely Allyson's public admission of it to her mother, spells the undoing of Kalman on almost all fronts, making a job working at a small diner in a college town for his buddy Jimmy (Danny DeVito) his most promising option.
These occurrences and the narrative trajectory of Solitary Man are not new nor are they approached from a particularly unique angle. The lensing, by the great German cinematographer Alwin H. Kuchlar, is efficient but rousing only in glimpses, as are Michael Penn's breezy score and Tricia Cooke's editing; Boston and New York have rarely looked so boring. But the general play-it-safe attitude that Koppelman and Levien show as technical directors belies their talent with actors and their meaty screenplay, which has a rare dedication to all its characters.
Best known for writing the scripts for Rounders and, most recently, The Girlfriend Experience, Koppelman and Levien have above all given Douglas his best role since his triumph in Curtis Hanson's Wonder Boys, not to mention his sleaziest since Wall Street or until Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. Kalman is a cad, unapologetic and self-legitimizing at every turn, but the womanizing, irresponsibility, and the generally nihilistic behavior would form caricature rather than character if it weren't for Douglas's immense charm, ability and wisdom. From asking his daughter to act like she's his wife to a terrifically awkward flirtation with the sweet girl (Olivia Thirlby) that is dating his young friend (Jesse Eisenberg), Douglas deploys and detonates his own bravado and the bravado of every ladies' man he's ever played; it's the closest he's gotten to his own Walt Kowalski.
The roles and scenes Eisenberg and Thirlby inhabit are generally superfluous, but then so is Kalman's climactic explanation of his behavior to his ex-wife. What slows down and dulls this otherwise refreshingly smart character study is the hope that Kalman's brutal outlook on life can be explained away or, more pointedly, that it is just a phase that the film needs him to get over. But Kalman is a psychologically dense character that is more fascinating when his actions go unanswered and his humanity is seen in glimmers rather than with the redemptive gestures that begin to pop up near the end of Solitary Man. The filmmaking is competent and watchable, though negligibly impersonal. But the role is suitable only for a titan, and that's exactly what it gets.
