Robert Carlyle as Lachlan (Strand Releasing)

Lachlan MacAldonich lives on his own. He works in a farm field, tending the vegetables, and selling them at markets. It’s menial work, but he gets by, until he gets pulled over for a DUI. This is shown pretty matter-of-factually, with Robert Carlyle giving the officer a goofy grin as he’s pulled over and faces the consequences. Which, as it turns out, are worse than he could have thought, thanks to an arrest years before for possessing pot back when he was with his old rock band the Cranks (no relation to the Cramps, in case you were wondering). He now could be deported back to the U.K.

To prove to Immigration and Customs Enforcement that he’s worth something to someone, Lachlan reconnects with those he either pushed away or let go, which include an ex-manager (who, of course, wants nothing to do with him since it was Lachlan’s lead-singer brother, dead for 15 years, who brought in the bread), his ex-wife, and a daughter he’s never met. And what about his old-time rock roots? Like any self-respecting arteest, he goes online (this is present day, mind you) to host a podcast featuring just him, his mic, and record player, where he expounds about dead musicians, like Marc Boal of T-Rex. And there’s booze. Lots of it. Probably too much. But hey, he’s Scottish.

I wasn’t expecting a performance like this from Robert Carlyle, but then again perhaps I should have. For years I’ve associated him with genre work or rough-and-no-nonsense Characters with a capital “C,” from The Beach to ABC’s Once Upon a Time, and, of course, his greatest role as the deranged and outrageous Francis Begbie in Trainspotting. California Solo seems like it should have been too easy a part for him. On the contrary, Lachlan has a lot of deep pain over his brother’s death and his own demise as a rock guitar God, whose career stopped before it begun. It’s possibly harder to play a more grounded person, and not fly off the rail and go nuts as Carlisle has done for so long.

This is the reason why California Solo is worth the hour and a half to check out in a theater or (more likely for most) on demand. Carlyle is achingly human, and I felt for his loss and bewilderment as his strained family ties become more strained. There is a kind of slight if agreeable subplot where a kinda-maybe romance happens between him and Beau (Alexia Rasumssen), but she’s already in a relationship with a one-dimensional rock music snob (Danny Masterson). It doesn’t really lead anywhere except that they are the sorta friends they were at the start. It kinda sits still while other things go on for the protagonist.

But keep watching Carlyle. Even when he’s given the requisite scene at a bar where he’s loaded on booze and enraged at a jukebox, it still feels true. Carlyle can do pretty much whatever he wants as an actor, given the intensity of his character and the subtlety the script demands (watch when he meets his daughter for the first time). He helps make a decent, competently made drama into a very good one. And the ending was surprisingly simple, too, in a superior way: an expectation isn’t met, and in its philosophical way, the film’s all the better for it.