Solitary Man (2009 — 90 mins)M. Doiuglas, Sarandon, J. Fischer,DeVito, Louise-Parker, J. Eisenberg

   Solitary man boats a nice cast and starts with some occasional laughs but really is not much more then a complete downer of a story. Michael Douglas is a successful businessman who has everything but over the course of some time of the movie just loses EVERYTHING he has. Everything from business, family, love and potentially his life. The movie really revolves around this plain despicable man (Douglas) who we really can’t even find a reason to root for. He’s a complete despicable asshole who gets some of what he deserves. Even after he seems to get it and spirals down, he STILL hasn’t learned much of his lesson. A movie like this usually has the train wreck and then something happens and we see some sort of redemption, if even brief, but usually decisive. Here? Nope. It’s a train wreck from beginning to basically the end and even the ending leaves ya wondering. Sure, every one of the other brief performances by the other stars is good. I will also admit that Douglas does a pretty good job of playing this asshole. The big problem isn’t him. It’s the movie/story/writing. Douglas is just too good at playing despicable that we just take it for granted. Also we can’t just take his performance as an excuse to accept this story as complete. It’s just too much of a train wreck or fully enjoy. We seem to enjoy that he gets what he deserves but then what? We lose interest after this b/c the rest is just meh.

Verdict—> The only people wo will like this movie are those who enjoyed watching the major train wreck movies in history. If you saw “Leaving Las Vegas” and that downer didn’t bother you much then sure go right ahead. But, it’s just too uncomfortable of a train wreck to recommend to anyone other then the most staunch Douglas lovers. It’s just him being Gordon Gecco in a different form. Meh save your time I would have to say.

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