Movie: Solitary Man

Here's the thing Kirk Douglas and Michael Douglas (father and son) had some level tension between each other. The younger Douglas seemed to feel that was the overbearing male figure that was common amongst fathers during that era. As a result Michael Douglas went into Hollywood determined to steer away from the macho characters of his fathers. You can see in his early work that it's all love stories with romantic male figures far away from the Spartcuses and rough, gunslinging cowboys of his father

Over his career though, Michael Douglas has developed a on screen persona of a man's man. True he rarely has any fight scenes, and those that he does are not the most action packed, but his is a more urban manliness; a more civilized masculinity than the barbaric nature of the older Mr. Douglas's characters. While he may have tried to play it soft in the beginnning there was always a kind of darkness that personafied from Michael Douglas; a alluring, devilish quality, which allowed him to so successfully capture his characters in movie such as Wallstreet and The Perfect Murder

In Solitary Man, which shares its title with a Johnny Cash song, we see this urban man's man descending from his peak into old age. The movie was tailored for Douglas and the man he has created on the screen. It is the perfect display of an accumlation of Douglas's talent over the decades.