Michael Douglas plays roles that leave him all alone
Michael Douglas might be best known for playing powerful men who
watch their professional and personal lives fall apart. In
”
Solitary Man,
”
a movie released in 2009 that is out on DVD and available on
instant play from Netflix, he plays Ben Kalmen.
Writer Brian Koppelman, who also directs with David Levien,
drops in on Kelman when his life is at its peak. He owns several
luxury car dealerships. He is happily married to Nancy (Susan
Sarandon) and things are good except that his doctor wants him to
see a specialist about a possible heart problem.
Michael Douglas plays roles that leave him all alone
Michael Douglas might be best known for playing powerful men who watch their professional and personal lives fall apart. In “Solitary Man,” a movie released in 2009 that is out on DVD and available on instant play from Netflix, he plays Ben Kalmen.
Writer Brian Koppelman, who also directs with David Levien, drops in on Kelman when his life is at its peak. He owns several luxury car dealerships. He is happily married to Nancy (Susan Sarandon) and things are good except that his doctor wants him to see a specialist about a possible heart problem.
Flash-forward several years and Kalmen is divorced, with a rocky relationship with his daughter Susan (Jenna Fischer) and he’s out of a job. The movie unravels his fall from grace, though it’s hard to feel sorry for him.
Kalmen is dating Jordan (Mary-Louise Parker) because her father is rich and he believes her father will smooth the way for him to open up a new dealership. He can’t find investors on his own because he was cheating customers with shady deals at his old dealerships – a crime for which he paid a fine but did no jail time. But though he is dating Jordan, he sees no problem with seeing other women on the side.
Even when he knows something is not in his best interest, he just can’t seem to refrain from it. When Jordan pressures him to take her daughter, a high school senior, on a college tour to his alma mater, Kalmen doesn’t want to do it. He knows the dean of admission so he’s supposed to help Allyson (Imogen Poots) get an in at the university. In fact, one of the campus buildings bears his name from his heyday in car sales.
When he gets to the university, he quickly gets into a tussle with an undergraduate who is less than half his age with twice the muscle. A security guard breaks the fight up and Daniel Cheston (Jesse Eisenberg) escorts him to the dean’s office. Allyson, meanwhile, has found a tour guide who wants to show her all the facets of college life.
In an awkward scene, Kalemn finds himself at a frat party with Daniel, where Allyson also happens to be. Kalmen instills his wisdom about women to Daniel, who is a bit of a loser. His basic advice is to just go with it and move on to the next one quickly. It’s what Kalmen does best.
But every once in a while even he creates a situation for himself that is seriously complicated. On the college visit, he sleeps with Allyson who later tells her mother about the hook-up. Jordan breaks up with Kalmen and her father quashes his dealership possibility. Kalmen is without a job, and borrowing money from his daughter Susan. But Susan, too, is close to her breaking point with him. He shows up late to events for his grandson, is irresponsible and causes her grief with some of his inappropriate relationships.
Douglas is at his best as a man who is out of control. But Kalmen is not the first time he’s played this role. It’s not much different from his “Wall Street” character Gordon Gecko, which he reprised in the 2010 sequel “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.” For those who don’t recall the original “Wall Street,” in it Gordon is a mentor to Bud (Charlie Sheen.) He pressures Bud to get him some insider tips so that he can make more money than he already has. At the end of the movie, Gordon betrays Bud and Bud ends up working with federal prosecutors to put Gordon away for insider trading.
In the sequel, Jake Moore (Shia LaBeouf) is a young trader who is on the brink of a great career. He seems to have a knack for trading and things are going great for him – he’s got a great apartment, a beautiful fiancee and plenty of potential. He happens to be engaged to Winnie Gecko (Carey Mulligan,) the estranged daughter of the former investor. Though she refuses to see or talk to her father, Jake is intrigued by his moves since getting out of prison.
Gordon has written an anti-greed anthem and is preaching that Wall Street will fall because of its unethical ways – suiting since that actually happened just before the movie was made. Jake makes contact with Gordon and offers to help the man get back in with his daughter in exchange for some help.
The movie follows pretty much the same form as the first, except this time Jake wants to save an alternative fuel company while Bud wanted to save a jet company. Jake is just as gullible as Bud was in taking everything Gordon says at face value. Michael Douglas does have quite a commanding presence, even when he is playing a man fallen from grace.
Both movies are worth a watch, even if just to see the moment when the light bulb finally goes off for Kalmen and Gordon Gecko.
