This movie dramatizes the human condition from two points of view; one, the human life as pretension, and two, human life as being finite. In this story, a man, Ben Kalmen, is running away from himself and in the process reveals his real nature. This apparent dichotomy drives the story. Kalmen is trying to escape from the truth, which terrifies him, and instead learns who he really is and what he is really about, which is the epitome of ugliness. The movie introduces Kalmen as being apparently a well-adjusted successful businessman, the kind of person who is considered mainstream and part of the bulwark of society. Six and half years later, his life has become a disaster, of his own making. His life is now a series of acting-out misadventures, the goal of which is to gain immediate physical gratification, no matter what the consequences. His responsibilities to families, friends and business no longer mean anything to him. As a result, he has alienated his friends and relatives, has been blackballed by his business associates and finds himself to be alone, a condition that he finds intolerable. Yet, it also reveals his truth about himself: that is in fact a rotten scoundrel and that up until six and half years ago his life was a fraud. What triggered all this was a routine medical examination which found that he may have a heart condition requiring further evaluation. Instead of dealing with it, Kalmen flees, fearing for his life. Now terrified that his life will soon end, he starts acting out, and ruins his life, in a matter already described. So, what the story dramatizes is a man running away from the truth while at the same time having to deal with the truth - about himself. When he was successful his life was a sham, he was acting a role, one that provided a certain amount of gratification but nonetheless was superficial. All along he wanted to act out, to be center stage, and while his props were in place, his selfish needs were being met. But after the shock from learning that his life could end, those props could no longer suffice because they meant gratification delayed, and he wanted all of it - the sex, the drinking, the acting out - before he died. Hence Ben Kalmen's life becomes a travesty and his conduct a grotesque caricature of a man who is trying to be cool when in fact he is a mess.This movie is about one's sense of mortality. How is one to deal with the undeniable fact that one day you will die. How is one supposed to cope with uncertainty? How is one supposed to react to a doctor wanting to run another test? What is one supposed to do? No matter what choice is made, the results are not pleasant. This is the case because either way one has to deal with the fact of their own mortality, that life is fleeting and that it will end. Life is reduced to a crap shoot. Michael Douglas gives one of his best performances as a man who is terrified by the thought of his own mortality. The medical test becomes a metaphor for forces that are beyond one's control. Douglas's character, Ben Kalmen, is terrified and this terror distorts his thinking. How is one to live when one does not know how much longer they will be alive?

What is the point of this movie? We basically watch the slow disintegration of a truly reprehensible and despicable character. Ben Kalmen has no redeeming features whatever, and his decline never seems to have a larger point to it. And the script that tells this tale is leaden and sluggish. It is also a problem that Douglas' performance seems to lack the nasty edge that this vile character requires; there is too much of the "nice guy" we have come to know from Douglas' other roles. He should have brought to the part some of the nastiness he showed as Steven Taylor in "A Perfect Murder." Also, the miserable way he treats his daughter and her family needs to elicit more rage from that character; Jenna Fischer's performance is flat and lacking the required anger. A music score might have helped, but it's in absentia. And the ending is simply completely unbelievable.

Solitary Man (2009)Michael Douglas is a wonder in this film. You could by a cynic and say that the arrogant, energetic, womanizing, aging man here is just Michael Douglas, and that it's not acting at all.But that's unfair, because he pulls it off with such responsive ease, it's a wonder. Not that he's a likable person. In fact, that's one of the things to get used to, having to watch a lecherous old man push and connive his way into a night with one young woman after another. It's actually the director and writer to blame, here, because this is a tired and abusive theme. As if all these old timers are really so irresistible !? (I'm thinking Clint Eastwood, here, too). Sorry, dudes, but these young women have much better meat to hunker down with. I mean, the real Douglas and the real Eastwood have that star power thing that might be true in real life--I can imagine wanting to say I slept with Michael Douglas the rest of my life, maybe. Maybe. But Michael Douglas plays a big time car salesman here, not himself, and he's already an aging loser by the time the movie begins, convicted of felonies, estranged with most of his family and previous life. That's the essence of the title, that this once connected man with the world before him was increasingly alone. And there seemed to be little he could do about it.As aggravating as all this is--you don't ever feel sorry for him--it's a sharply witty screenplay and the editing is fast, the acting first rate. In fact, it's in many ways a good movie. It's a contrivance, for sure, and pushes too hard, but in the same ways, so did "The Blind Side" with the extraordinary acting of Sandra Bullock. So we have here a worthwhile movie despite all its flaws, some of them pretty obvious. And Danny DeVito is his usual self, well cast (hate to say) as a deli owner.But there is no escaping a larger point or two. First of all, Douglas is a predator who seems to get away with it all, which is sort of okay, but his former wife, played in a brief role by Susan Sarandon, has to take on that most horrible or roles--the ever forgiving wife, waiting for her man despite his really extensive selfishness and downright meanness. And then there is the nearly impossible scenario of the daughter of his current girlfriend suddenly losing all resistance to the man. But I say too much. This daughter, by the way, is played with more artistry than her role probably required by an impressive Imogen Poots. She's worth keeping a watch on.But Michael Douglas is the bread, the butter, and the dessert here. He appears in every scene, and his acting is perfect. And his character does represent a problem for older men (and women) losing some kind of sexual aura (and ability). And so the man copes, in his own excessive way. Brace yourself for the other stuff, and watch him roll.

Directors David Levien and Barry Kopelman (from Kopelman's script) give the best possible thing they could for Michael Douglas: to play someone who makes a living at playing. In a sense this is a return to a character like Gordon Gecko, who is a bigger than life guy, only this time he's knocked down by a bunch of pegs. He's done some criminal things as "The Only Honest Car Dealer" around, and he's let down his daughter and grandson in more ways than one (mostly by, as usually the case with family, not being there), and he's a hopeless womanizer, who uses his skills as a car salesman to hone in on what makes woman, uh, want him I guess. And this gets him in more hot water, especially when he seduces family friends and even the 18 year old daughter of his current girlfriend. His daughter thinks he has a psychological disorder and needs help. In reality, I think he's just an aging Casanova, way in over his head after years of skating on success.Douglas plays this guy, Ben Kalmen, a man who has his name on top of a library at a university up in Boston as he donated all that money, like a man who knows everything and nothing at the same time. He's a consummate people person, can charm the pants off anyone, seduce most women, but is clueless in seeing the errors in his ways over time. Douglas would come back to play this, perhaps now in retrospect redundantly, this very year with Wall Street 2, only in that case given a boost up by actually serving jail time. Ben hasn't been to jail, per- say. He's been in his own solitary-made prison (hence the title). Does he like that? It is what it is, he says at one point.I love watching Douglas be able to make a character look interesting even when (perhaps, admittedly) it looks as if he's just playing 'himself', or how we might picture Michael Douglas to be in, well, if not real life kind of like his 'movie-life' if that makes sense (kind of like how George Clooney puts on a persona that seems like "him"). He actually elevates a script that is good but not very ambitious with where it wants to take its characters. It's very straightforward about where it's going, which is the comeuppance of a man who has done too much in his life to screw over women, screw over family, screw over competition. By the end it's even questionable whether he'll even have a home exactly.But in a way I, as I'm sure we all, enjoy watching Douglas being a kind of cool-hand jerk, oily and suave and such a playboy that he can charm even in a t-shirt lent by mentee Jesse Eisenberg. Unfortunately the humbling period isn't quite as cathartic as that in another Douglas vehicle, also compared by other critics, of Wonder Boys. That had a lot more going on with its supporting characters, while here those around him are soundboards, telling him what's going on with him, where he's gone wrong, or in a few exceptions (Eisenberg, De Vito) on his side but cautious as friends and allies. It's a good character study though not a very good drama, if that might make sense. I suppose ultimately this and Wall Street 2 would make the better combination; neither film reaches greatness, but they'll do as Golden-Age prime-rib roles for its star, who is magnetic, humorous, touching, engaging, and, thankfully, sympathetic to a degree. And there's a lot of fun to be had too, thank goodness.