Solace is a 2015 mystery/thriller film directed by Afonso Poyart and starring Sir Anthony Hopkins, Colin Farrell, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and Abbie Cornish.
It's a tale about a serial killer, a psychic, and a pair of FBI agents looking to solve the killings. Agent Joe Merriweather (Morgan) and his partner Agent Katherine Cowles (Cornish) contact John Clancy (Hopkins), a psychic who has helped the FBI (and Joe specifically) on cases before. Katherine is skeptical of John's abilities, but quickly grows to appreciate his insights as well as his companionship. Meanwhile, John begins to realize, over the course of their case, that he's up against someone very familiar, and someone who may very well be better than him.
The film is perhaps better known for having originally been written as a sequel to Se7en, with Morgan Freeman as the psychic, before it was scrapped and later rewritten with Hopkins in the role as Solace.
This film exhibits the following tropes:
- Fair Cop: Katherine is far from hard on the eyes.
- Mercy Kill: This is Charlie Ambrose's modus operandi. His victims are terminally ill and by killing them painlessly, he spares them a more lingering death. This is even true of John's and Charlie's deaths, though neither is painless. This is subverted by John Clancy who points out that most terminally ill victims would prefer to live just a little bit longer. However it turns out he's a hypocrite for saying so because he performed euthanasia himself on his terminally ill daughter, who was in great pain (although it may be assumed that he would have at least had a better idea of what his daughter would have wanted where Ambrose is making this choice for relative strangers).
- Nay-Theist: The killer, after John accuses him of playing God, responds that he's not, as God's work doesn't impress him so he has to step in.
- Police Psychic: John Clancy is a psychic who occasionally helps the FBI out. Things get nasty when the killer he is consulted to help catch has abilities more powerful than his.
- Scry vs. Scry: Both John Clancy and Charlie Ambrose can see the future. The last segment of the film has them countering each others' plans until John chooses to follow Charlie's, but for a different purpose.
- You Can't Fight Fate: This is played with. John visualizes John dying in the hospital and Katherine with blood flowing down her head after a gunshot. The first happens exactly as visualized with an indication that it was too late to change their fate already. The second first happens exactly as the vision predicted, then he changes his action slightly and the blood on Katherine's face is from a graze on John's head, not from her own injury.
