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“When you leave from this film you leave remembering one thing… That being alone is not how you really want to end up.”

Synopsis- Solitary Man tells the story of Ben Kalmen, a fifty-something New Yorker and former successful car dealer, who through his own bad choices lost his entire business. When the film opens, Ben’s on the verge of a comeback, but some of the same motivations that led to his demise are threatening to take him down again. He’s divorced from Nancy, his college sweetheart and the one person who knows him better than anyone. Although he still finds the time to hang out with his daughter Susan and his adoring grandson, she breaks off contact when she discovers he’s seeing one of her friends. His girlfriend Jordan is the daughter of a very influential businessman who’s on the board of a major auto manufacturer. If Ben can just keep his hubris in check for a little while longer. He will be back as big as ever. But circumstances place him in very close proximity with the one girl he shouldn’t touch, throwing everything into jeopardy.

Michael Douglas still has the swag  of an older gentleman as he steps into picture as Ben Kalemen. His presence and screenplay will steer you closer to the screen in this film, as if you didn’t already in his many others (Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct, Traffic, The American President…). The Academy Award winner for Best Actor in Wall Street (Keep an eye out for Wall Street 2 coming to theatres Fall 2010) for his performance as the ruthless corporate raider Gordon Gekko in the 1981 awards,  falls shy of his mark. My feeling is that way because the story of Solitary Man was just not as intense. In fact it was really hard to grasp the roles of each character. Eventually all makes sense but not to his persona. What goes up doesn’t always come down but in his case he fell to some pretty hard times for a once wealthy man.

It all boiled down to Ben Kalemen having nobody left to turn to but  Jimmy Marino (Danny Devito), an old chum, and a few kind words of advice to the youth. Well that doesn’t work either, guess that’s why he is a Solitary Man.

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