Purely Joyful Movie!

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Movie starts wonderfully... the last 40 minutes.. good lord, terrible. The chick who plays the female cop is a pretty terrible actress as well.Colin Farell... eh... does better than I expected.Anthony Hopkins has a legendary performance as usual, but it's not enough to save this movie.

When I first seen this on the shelf at my library, I thought it looks pretty good. When I seen this I thought this is a damn good movie with a good story and really good performances.The film is basically your typical serial killer goes on a rampage and FBI agents must stop him formula, but this film is refreshingly done with great twists and takes interesting turns along the way.The performances from Anthony Hopkins, Colin Farrell, Jefferey Dean Morgan and Abbie Cornish were very good, everyone brought their A-game in this. Jefferey and Abbie play FBI agents and Anthony is a doctor who is physic who from what I can tell, is a cop, and the FBI uses him from time to time on really difficult cases. On this case, the killer there after is just like Anthony's character, a physic ,and has them follow his bazaar riddles and clues, which is really cool.I know it won't happen but I kinda want to see a sequel to this because the concept is fresh, this film could be a franchise. Originally this was the sequel to Seven that started Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt but was changed to this instead, I think at the time New Line Cinema didn't like it or it never got of the ground, but I'm glad it was rescued and made as this instead. Besides Seven is very hard to franchise if you think about it.The action scenes are good and the story is cool it's one of these edge of your seat kinda flicks, with a great ending that I will not spoil. I give it a 7/10. A good movie that I can't recommend enough to you. See it.

According to trivia notes, this was pencilled in as a potential sequel to Se7en. Thankfully that was overruled, but if the same director and script editors had been on hand as with Se7en, then we might have got an excellent film.It's a psychic cop redrafted back into the police to capture a psychic villain. That's it really.Anthony Hopkins leads a cast who are not in the same league as himself, and it clearly shows. Despite that, the script doesn't often help, and the director is clearly out of his depth with this one. So much could have been done.What should be a taut storyline, really isn't. The premise of psychic cops and villain, doesn't ever convince or leave on edge, and there seems to have been soft porn takes added in as it would be the only talking point for some, and kind of devalued the film. It never added to anything.It's not by any means the poorest movie you'll see of late, but it's one that one will best be left for late night satellite film TV stations as a filler. Nothing more. Disappointing.

The screenplay for "Solace" became a stand-alone movie after it was reject by David Fincher as a proposed sequel to "Se7en", called "Ei8ht" (is out there a more ridiculous / forced title for a sequel ?). Well, Sir Anthony Hopkins, unfortunately, stopped cared or he's becoming senile to executive produce such a far-fetched & implausible script that could have been an acceptable B-movie, if it wasn't directed in a serious tone like if this rookie director would think he was making a new "Se7en" or "The Silence of the Lambs" for the 'millennials' standards. I don't know why in the hell Hollywood is still hiring those Brazilian directors and give them millions to helm a big studio's production like this. José Padilha killed the "RoboCop" franchise with the atrocious remake, and now Afonso Poyart delivers one of the worst psychological thrillers ever produced. The direction is so damn 'flashy'; it lacks tension and atmosphere required for such a mystery / thriller film; the composition of shots is nothing sort of spectacular, even if the director is trying too hard, visually, to innovate the genre. The camera tricks added in post production became so repetitive & annoying that it looked like we're watching a cartoon-ish or a sci-fi / superhero movie shot in "The Matrix" style. The supporting cast delivers terrible performances, Abbie Cornish can't act as a F.B.I. Special Agent even if she was possessed by one, and not because of her Barbie looks, just check the "Criminal Minds" T.V. Show and the actresses play their parts with much more authenticity. I don't know if Jeffrey Dean Morgan was jinxed or is just because his acting skills are limited and he just can't lead a film. On this account, for every theatrical released movie he was in, it's either from terrible to utter crap or a box office flop. He needs to stuck on TV Shows such as "Supernatural" & "Walking Dead" and quit cinema for once. The only positive thing about this mess of a movie were the performances from both Anthony Hopkins and Colin Farrell that always delivered the goods in every role they were in. Hopkins is so typecast in this particular parts that he can do it with charm & confidence, even in his sleep and Farrell is convincing & leave a mark in the film, besides his limited 'less than 20 minutes" screen time as the morose serial-killer. Their scenes together were very good and both have great chemistry on-screen that deserved a way better movie. Verdict: as a psychological thriller it fails in every department: it takes itself too seriously; the screenplay is full of bad written dialogue delivered even worse and the premise is risible to say the least, it earns maybe 2 extra points for the performances of the two protagonists.