In a quiet week of cinema releases, a film called Solace was released starring Anthony Hopkins and Colin Farrell, we hadn’t heard of it before, had not even seen a trailer so felt like one of those many direct to DVD’s films Nicolas Cage turns up in of late.
So we were quite happy to let this one pass us by until we read an article about the film where we discovered that the film’s screenplay was originally purchased to be turned into a sequel for the masterpiece that was Se7en so we were now intrigued.
Solace is about how a psychic, John Clancy (played by Hopkins) uses his powers to help the FBI track down a series killer (for the proposed Se7en sequel, Morgan Freeman’s character would have developed the psychic powers, yes that daft as he never had them in the original, so David Fincher said no and Ei8ht never happened)
This film starts off really well, FBI officers Joe Merriweather (Watchmen’s Jeffrey Dean Morgan, although as fans of TV’s ‘Supernatural’ he will always be the Winchester Boys dad to us) and Katherine Cowles (Abbie Cornish, last seen in the Robocop remake) are on the hunt of a serial killer.
Joe turns to his former friend John, who following a personal loss, has hidden away from this sort of work. John agrees to use his ‘powers’ to help them track down a lead so they can get closer to the killer after experiences visions for both Joe and Katherine.
The relationship between John and Katherine is played very much like the X-Files Mulder and Scully in that Katherine believes in psychology and detective work to catch a killer and not visions.
Now, you may be confused that I have not mentioned Farrell yet, he is not the hero in this piece and for most of the film, we only see glimpses of him in Clancy’s visions but we do learn he also has visions which he uses for ‘good’ all his victims have life-threatening illnesses.
In a time, when every other film seems to be a remake or sequel, its always good to see something different (albeit Psychics helping solve murders has been done before, we straight away admit to pining for the Lance Henriksen TV show Millennium) however after a great first hour, the ending felt a bit silly for us.
There are things to like about this film, great use of music, the fact that the 2 FBI officers are not the name stars of the film means they are both expendable, so you feel either could be killed rather than know they are going to save the day, it does not drag and with a 101 minute run time doesn’t overstay its welcome but you can’t help but feel this film is best as a direct to DVD movie than a cinema release.
Having thought about it over night, in my opinion I actually feel the film may have worked better with the roles reversed with Farrell playing Clancy on the trail of the serial killer, a role we know Hopkins can do well, especially if we serve him a nice chianti =)
Have you seen Solace? What did you think, we’d love to hear from you.
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