everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The story of this movie is only an excuse to introduce sexual addiction where only one individual have sexuality and women appears to pander its sexual desires as main funny puppets. Bad way to describe persons and respectful between persons. So what is the theme on this movie: there is not. No values, no relationship, no arguments, no dialog, no plot. Story is a way to make porn without make porn. Pathetic individual is only a means to insinuate perversions: less$$$=+sexual women made as bitches. The ability of director is to make this mystification: the no-story is an excuse to make a porn movie. A classic scam movie as only Hollywood can promote perversions in its classic way.

With a cast including Michael Douglas, Susan Sarandon, Jesse Eisenberg and Danny DeVito, one wonders why a film such as 'Solitary Man' fails to hit the mark. It all comes down to the concept promulgated by co-directors Brian Koppelman and David Levien. Simply put, films about losers (or sad sacks as I like to call them), more often than not, don't work! Why is it that Majorie Baumgartner, writing in the Austin Chronicle, concludes that, "The actors are all charged up, too; there's just nowhere in this script for them to go?" That's because everything about Ben Kalmen (Douglas' shark who has seen better days) is pre-ordained. From the outset, the former car dealership honcho is a self-sabotaging boor who after losing all his millions, attempts to manipulate women (including his own daughter) so he can take their money to bankroll new schemes of pure self-entitlement.Sure there are a few real-life stories of sharks such as Kalmen who fall from grace; but those aren't the interesting ones. Far more interesting is the bad guy who succeeds—A Tony Soprano who is both maniacal and charming at the same time. There will always be interesting, conflicting characters who oppose a Tony Soprano—and there's always the hope that someone will stop him (but sometimes we want Tony to get the better of his opponents—even though we know deep down, he's not an honorable or ethical human being). But in the case of a Ben Kalmen, the perennial has-been loser, it's hard to root for someone who is so unpleasant.I have no doubt that the films' scenarists' strategy is to hold up Kalmen's story as a cautionary tale. Unlike Michael Douglas' iconic, charming rogue 'Gordon Gekko', whose 'Greed is good' philosophy is the underpinning of the insightful and entertaining 1987 film 'Wall Street', what we're supposed to get from the 'Solitary Man' is that 'greed is bad'. Kalmen simplistically is driven by greed and that's why he uses women. Ultimately, the filmmakers try to make a case for Kalmen that he's charming but he also must be punished. The 'charming' moments only involve male-bonding: his affection for his son, the dating advice he gives to impressionable student, Crestin (Jesse Eisenberg), as well as the mutual affection between Kalmen and long-lost friend Jimmy Marino (but such bonding only goes so far; Kalmen sabotages his relationship with Jimmy, failing to acknowledge his old friend's true spirit of generosity).As to his relationships with women, it's one monstrous fling after another. Kalmen beds the 17 year old daughter of his girlfriend, while he accompanies her on a trip to look at a college campus. When the girlfriend's daughter reveals that Kalmen went to bed with her, the mother reverses her decision to pull strings, to aid Kalmen, so he can get back into the auto dealership business. Then Kalmen is cut off by his own daughter, after she learns he had an affair with the mother of one of her young son's friends. Soon afterward, Kalmen hits on Crestin's girlfriend while he's drunk at a party. Crestin, generous in spirit, excuses Kalmen, accepting the excuse that he was intoxicated. The final coup de grace is when Kalmen is beaten up by an ex-police officer, hired by his former girlfriend, who doesn't want him to be anywhere in the vicinity of her daughter, the one who Kalmen slept with.At the beginning of the film we learn that Kalmen has a heart condition but never follows up with the doctors. His explanation to his ex-wife as to why he chose not to go for the follow-up check-ups is perhaps the only real brilliant moment in the film (in essence, Kalmen concludes the check-ups are more beneficial to the doctors than to the patients, since his condition is more a lifestyle issue than something the doctors can really successfully treat). Nonetheless, the alarming diagnosis and Kalmen's decision to ignore it, fails to provide a cogent explanation for his continuing bad behavior.In the end, the cautionary tale of a sad sack loser, driven by greed and a desperate obsession to manipulate women, doesn't quite ring true. There's something a little too pathetic about a Ben Kalmen and the filmmakers attempt to humanize him, falls flat. Better to focus on a character with an ego, who gets away with his bad behavior, instead of offering up a drab morality play, where the loser gets his predictable comeuppance.

With the considerable build-up for the long-awaited sequel to the mega hit potboiler Wall Street that starred Michael Douglas, fans of the original film, understandably so, flocked to theaters for Wall Street 2,15 years later.But while a large majority of the movie-going public's attention was diverted to the powerful role that garnered him critical praise, and was touted as his return—Douglas' other film; the Indie drama Solitary Man, quietly previewed with less fanfare of course than you'd expect for a hugely anticipated follow-up.Therefore, technically, Douglas' comeback is that of an aging, formerly successful automobile magnate, who at the prospect of possibly facing a serious health condition proceeds to systematically destroy his marriage and professional reputation as his life goes into free fall.In choosing to deal with this probability by not dealing with it at all, subsequently causes Douglas' character to spiral out-of-control into a self-imposed mid-life crisis, where the story picks up. We find him attempting to regain his once high profile, privileged lifestyle in the world of big auto industry wheelers and dealers.As compassionate human beings we like to root for the underdog to rebound when he gets knocked down or tries to regain what he's lost. However, there's little if any sympathy for this solitary man, except when his reckless behavior threatens to jeopardize his relationship with his daughter and grandson. Then we see some hint of penitence.Likewise, a person in peril will nearly always instinctively elicit audience reaction, but Douglas' portrayal of the self-destructive, foul-mouthed figure is so indisputably warped it is virtually impossible to view him sympathetically. Sort of like watching a train wreck in slow motion.The hypothesis isn't focused so much on Douglas' fear of mortality or even having lost his lucrative livelihood, as it is on his visible tendency towards attracting younger women—even in the presence of his daughter and ex-wife (played by Susan Sarandon, who coincidentally is also in Wall Street 2).Yet again, due to his unapologetic attitude for his actions and lack of display of any real desire to redeem himself for the damage he's done to his family and his career, you can't help feeling justified in not investing emotionally in him.

Directors David Levien and Barry Kopelman (from Kopelman's script) give the best possible thing they could for Michael Douglas: to play someone who makes a living at playing. In a sense this is a return to a character like Gordon Gecko, who is a bigger than life guy, only this time he's knocked down by a bunch of pegs. He's done some criminal things as "The Only Honest Car Dealer" around, and he's let down his daughter and grandson in more ways than one (mostly by, as usually the case with family, not being there), and he's a hopeless womanizer, who uses his skills as a car salesman to hone in on what makes woman, uh, want him I guess. And this gets him in more hot water, especially when he seduces family friends and even the 18 year old daughter of his current girlfriend. His daughter thinks he has a psychological disorder and needs help. In reality, I think he's just an aging Casanova, way in over his head after years of skating on success.Douglas plays this guy, Ben Kalmen, a man who has his name on top of a library at a university up in Boston as he donated all that money, like a man who knows everything and nothing at the same time. He's a consummate people person, can charm the pants off anyone, seduce most women, but is clueless in seeing the errors in his ways over time. Douglas would come back to play this, perhaps now in retrospect redundantly, this very year with Wall Street 2, only in that case given a boost up by actually serving jail time. Ben hasn't been to jail, per- say. He's been in his own solitary-made prison (hence the title). Does he like that? It is what it is, he says at one point.I love watching Douglas be able to make a character look interesting even when (perhaps, admittedly) it looks as if he's just playing 'himself', or how we might picture Michael Douglas to be in, well, if not real life kind of like his 'movie-life' if that makes sense (kind of like how George Clooney puts on a persona that seems like "him"). He actually elevates a script that is good but not very ambitious with where it wants to take its characters. It's very straightforward about where it's going, which is the comeuppance of a man who has done too much in his life to screw over women, screw over family, screw over competition. By the end it's even questionable whether he'll even have a home exactly.But in a way I, as I'm sure we all, enjoy watching Douglas being a kind of cool-hand jerk, oily and suave and such a playboy that he can charm even in a t-shirt lent by mentee Jesse Eisenberg. Unfortunately the humbling period isn't quite as cathartic as that in another Douglas vehicle, also compared by other critics, of Wonder Boys. That had a lot more going on with its supporting characters, while here those around him are soundboards, telling him what's going on with him, where he's gone wrong, or in a few exceptions (Eisenberg, De Vito) on his side but cautious as friends and allies. It's a good character study though not a very good drama, if that might make sense. I suppose ultimately this and Wall Street 2 would make the better combination; neither film reaches greatness, but they'll do as Golden-Age prime-rib roles for its star, who is magnetic, humorous, touching, engaging, and, thankfully, sympathetic to a degree. And there's a lot of fun to be had too, thank goodness.