THE SOLOIST (Cert. 12A, 117 mins)
Stars: Robert Downey Jr, Jamie Foxx, Catherine Keener, Nelsan Ellis, Tom Hollander, Lisa Gay Hamilton
Directed by Joe Wright

RAW talent will only get you so far. More often than not, it’s the people you know and being in the right place at the right time.

The Soloist is an inspirational true story about a musical prodigy crippled by schizophrenia, who unexpectedly gets a second chance at his dreams, thanks to an influential journalist.

The fractious relationship between the two men is at the heart of Joe Wright’s third feature.

It becomes abundantly clear that he has one eye staring down the lens, the other on a second Academy Award nomination.

Robert Downey Jr and Jamie Foxx give powerful performances, the latter ricocheting between violently confused and playfully sarcastic.

Screenwriter Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich) successfully conveys the desperation of people living on crowded streets, their hopes washed down the gutter many years ago. Yet everything feels contrived, right down to the comic interludes with Steve warding off racoons using bags of coyote urine, which invariably sloshes down him.

Grant also tinkers with the facts – Mary and Claydon are both fictional – and the emotional pay-off with Nathaniel’s estranged sister, who thought he was dead, is forced.