Goodbye Solo

5/5 Stars

Have you ever sat down to start a movie that you know very little about, and then within the first five minutes known that it was going to be something special?
That does not happen to me too often but I always get very excited when it does.
I redboxed Goodbye Solo because I vaguely remembered Adam and Matty giving it some sort of praise on their podcast, Filmspotting, a few months back.
From the very beginning of the film I had a good feeling about it. It was shot in a very simple way. It appeared to be using non-professional actors, but they were only serving to give the film a more genuine feel. It also had a low-budget indie feel to it.
Goodbye Solo is the story of an African-American taxi driver and an older Caucasian male. One night Solo is giving a ride to a patron, who seems like any other, except that he has asked Solo to take him to Blowing Rock the morning of October the 20th and just leave him their. The man has offered him $1,000 dollars to do this, but Solo takes an earnest interest in the man's motives and rather than just jumping at the chance to earn an easy $1,000 dollars he chooses to invest in the man's life by trying to discover what has him so down.
The man gets angry with Solo for asking questions and shoves a $100 deposit into his face and says he will pay him the rest in cash on the 20th. Solo reluctantly takes the money and then drops the man off at his requested destination, the theatre.
From there Solo goes on to try building a relationship with the man when he ends up picking him up again to take him to the movies. He discovers that his name is William and then continues to invest in him, spend time with him, and be his friend.
We also get to se what Solo's life is like at home, and the dreams he has for himself other than being a cab driver his whole life.
Solo is perhaps the most genuine and enjoyable character that I have met this year. He just loves people, and I loved spending time with him and very quickly invested in him and his story.
I strongly recommend this movie to anyone. It is rated R for some brief language and it would likely fail to entertain any children. Also, as I said above, it is a low-budget indie film, and it is character driven so if you don't care for those types of movies then I doubt this one will be an acceptation.
This film had an '08 festival release but was not widely available until the spring of '09 so I will be considering it an '09 release when it comes time for my end of the year list, and I am most certain that it will appear there.

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