Feature length commentary by director Joe Wright, featurettes on the making of the movie, animated short, deleted scenes and the theatrical trailer

Poorly marketed during its brief release “The Soloist” suffered from Dreamworks not quite knowing what to do with a film about a mentally ill homeless musician named Nathanial Ayers(Jaime Foxx) and L.A. Times Journalist Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.) who ends up befriending him and tries to Ayers get back on his feet as well as reach the audience of listeners that he deserves. Ayers was a gifted cellist at Julliard before mental illness claimed his talent and his life forcing him on the street. When Lopez encounters Ayers he plays a beat up cello missing strings but that doesn’t prevent the talented musician who loves Beethoven from tackling the pieces that continue to touch him through the cloudy haze of his illness. ***

Directed by Joe Wright (“Atonement”) “The Soloist” sadly got thrown into the malady of the week category that you’d expect from a TV movie but really it’s a touching and powerful film with a nuanced screenplay by Susannah Grant which takes the events in Lopez’s book and compresses them (with changes naturally to make it work dramatically) into a two hour movie. Wright and Grant use Lopez and Ayer’s story to give us a snapshot of two very talented individuals working through their own crisis and how both find some level of redemption as Lopez pursues the elusive hope of reaching Ayers and bringing him back to our world. ---

Image & Sound:

The Blu-ray features an often stunning transfer allowing Wright’s brilliant use of color and images to shine. Detail is extremely good with a sharp image that still has a nice film-like quality. ***

The 5.1 Dolby True HD allows the music that Wright uses throughout the film to expertly evoke the ache of our main characters to sound truly stunning. Dialogue is front and center and all the elements of the sound track are nicely balance. Subtitles for English, SDH and Spanish are included. ---

Director Joe Wright’s thoughtful and observant commentary track remains the best special feature here. He’s pretty chatty overall giving us more than the usual “oh this is a nice scene” commentary that tends to dominate commentary tracks. ***

“An Unlikely Friendship” allows the cast and crew to discuss the making of the film and what inspired them to become involved in telling this story. ***

“Kindness, Courtesy and Respect: Mr. Ayers and Mr. Lopez” allows the real men to give their account of their relationship. ***

“One Size Does Not Fit All” focuses on the homeless problem in Los Angeles (and, in some respects, the United States but using L.A. as an example of the issue). Having worked on L.A.’s skid row while shooting a film a couple of years back it appears to me that things have only gotten worse and I can imagine with the economy the way it is that more people will fall through the hole in the social services net and end up there as well. ***

“Beth’s Story” is an animated short that focuses on the very real problems that face the homeless living on the street and subjected to pain, humiliation and, in some cases, death. ***

“Julliard: The Education of Nathanial Ayers” is pretty self explanatory. I wasn’t aware that Ayers was a classmate of acclaimed violinist Yo Yo Ma. ***

We also get deleted scenes and the original theatrical trailer. ---

Final Words: