I decided to watch ‘Solace‘ for Anthony Hopkins. If Hopkins was in a movie where he reads the phone book, I would still choose to watch it. Since ‘Solace‘ was promoted as belonging to a genre I like – psychological thriller – I hesitated even less. The film is from 2015 and is the only one made in Hollywood so far by Brazilian director Afonso Poyart. I don’t know exactly why his American career was so short. For now, he has returned home and hasn’t made any films in the United States since then, but I don’t think this film is the reason. ‘Solace‘ is a combination of whodunit and psychological thriller that looks to me over the average Hollywood genre film in many ways.
We can’t blame the producers or the director for casting Anthony Hopkins in the role of a medium who helps the police team in their criminal investigations. The three-time Hannibal Lecter star plays John Clancy, a psychic who retired, possibly due to his depression after his daughter’s death from leukemia. Clancy can read the past and predict the future, a little too well and too at the right time, and this is perhaps the weakest point of the script. The pair of detectives investigating a series of homicides that seem to have been committed by the same serial killer manage to convince him to return to work for this investigation. As the investigation progresses, the number of victims increases and the profile of the killer begins to take shape. He is also a psychic with powers similar to or even greater than John Clancy’s, but with opposing goals. At least at first sight.
‘Solace‘ starts as an episode of a television police series. It really looks and sounds like one from a visual and soundtrack point of view, and the two FBI agents – a veteran cop with his personal problems and a younger, blonde and sexy colleague – could very well be the heroes of a series. From a certain point on, however, the story – without completely abandoning the action scenes – turns into a confrontation between two super-gifted men with psychic abilities, one oriented to kill, the other to discover murderers and prevent future crimes. This is what makes ‘Solace‘ a slightly special film. Anthony Hopkins did not disappoint me, Colin Farrell also appears in a supporting but important role, while Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Abbie Cornish are very well cast in the roles of the two police officers. ‘Solace‘ is a film that I think will not disappoint fans of action police films or those of intelligent police thrillers.