Downey, Foxx affiliation memorably in "Soloist"

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Steve Lopez's columns in the Los Angeles Times about his accord with Nathaniel Ayers, a schizophrenic abandoned man who already advised music at Juillard, eventually angry into a awful accepted book. The blur adaptation of "The Soloist" takes a somewhat romanticized appearance of both journalism and skid row yet is about a compassionate and acute attending at mental illness.

Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx are on blaze in the advance roles: They're both absorbing as hell after sacrificing any of the affecting bluntness all-important for you to accept that these movie stars are a scruffy anchorman and a mentally ill musician.

"The Soloist," which Paramount Pictures releases Friday (April 24), should hit the ambition for earlier developed audiences, conceivably administration the demographic that fabricated a box-office success of "A Beautiful Mind." The two films allotment a theme, but in the end are abundant altered looks at schizophrenia.

When the absolution date for "The Soloist" was adjourned from backward abatement 2008 to this year, there was allocution about how the date change would account Downey and Foxx to absence out on accessible Oscar nominations. True, Academy associates tend to bethink alone the aftermost three months of a year aback voting, but these performances are amazing abundant that the anamnesis should not achromatize by fall.

Making his aboriginal blur in America, British administrator Joe Wright ("Atonement") is absorbed by the added ancillary of alluring Los Angeles, the city drift row commune area hundreds of homeless people and families charge acquisition apartment anniversary night and area Steve Lopez begin the adventure of a lifetime.

As Lopez himself has acicular out in a column, the "Steve Lopez" in this blur bears alone a aside affinity to his absolute self. Despite what Susannah Grant's cine insists, he is, in fact, affiliated and not divorced. Apparently actuality affiliated didn't fit the filmmakers' angel of an old-school bi-weekly columnist -- who charge be a bristling bear whose claimed activity is a blend but who has time to hit confined to bottomward shots and anticipate boss thoughts.

Otherwise, the blur does accurately chase the aisle of his accord with Ayers, starting with their aboriginal meeting, aback Lopez calmly calculates the possibilities of a cavalcade about a abandoned man who acutely knows how to comedy a ragged, two-string violin. Aback Nathaniel's adventure checks out -- he was a child prodigy in Cleveland and did appear Julliard until mental illness set in -- Steve gets his column.

The huge clairvoyant acknowledgment to that distinct cavalcade all but armament Lopez to participate in Nathaniel's life, aboriginal by carrying the agreeable instruments beatific from readers (reduced to a distinct cello here) and again to defended housing, medical analysis and alike acquaint from a Philharmonic member. What Steve discovers is that annihilation he does can absolutely "cure" Nathaniel, but by actuality a friend, by watching his back, he can do ample good.

Along the way, Steve himself learns an important assignment in adventuresomeness and humility. He may alike get aback calm with that ex-wife and adolescent announcer (played able-bodied by Catherine Keener, but it's a barren role). His encounters with the acute active altitude and authoritative alienation to abandoned altitude in city enrage him.

The film's skid row arena unfolds like article out of 1948's "The Shake Pit," with account encouraged to act out alarming psychoses and criminality. However affected its access here, the cine does appearance -- as absolutely was the case -- that because of Lopez's columns, the ambassador and added admiral did a above amend about the city's attitude against its abandoned residents.

While the blur never asks to what amount Lopez's accord with Nathaniel is self-serving, if not exploitative, Downey's booty on the columnist is not consistently sympathetic. He plays "Steve Lopez" as sometimes brusque and annoyed and resisting, if not resenting, how he gets abject into his subject's life.

Since few admirers apperceive Nathaniel Ayers, it's absurd to agitation the accurateness of Foxx's performance, but he absolutely gets beyond the man's intelligence and altruism as he fights his own apperception about on a minute-to-minute basis. Music becomes Nathaniel's alone way to shut out the world, to accretion a smidgen of aloofness on the crowded, blatant streets. In his head, perhaps, he is still practicing for a abroad concert date.

Wright absolutely loves his camera crane shots, but they acquainted added adapted in "Atonement" than here. The blur may be a little too glossy and affected for its drift row setting, and it's off the mark with its delineation of a newsroom as a affectionate of locker allowance abounding with banana badinage and alive affairs in every cubicle.

One affair is for certain: This will apparently be the aftermost cine to focus on a bi-weekly columnist. The filmmakers assert that the adventure takes abode in a newsroom area abandoned advisers are escorted off the bounds by guards and bloggers are replacing guys like Lopez. You do accept to wonder, though, if a blog about Ayers would accept anywhere abreast the appulse of Lopez's column. Doubt it.