THE SOLOIST (2008)

Starring: Robert Downey, Jr. & Jamie Foxx

Director: Joe Wright

When the Soloist was originally intended to be a 2008 Oscar hopeful, the initial advertising campaign made it look like a cross between Shine and A Beautiful Mind. And the setup certainly smacks of Oscar bait: Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez (Downey), recovering from an especially nasty bike accident, meets the homeless Nathaniel Anthony Ayers (Foxx) during a walk through the park. Because Nathaniel plays a violin with just two strings -- and plays it rather well -- he catches Steve's eye, and Steve, always on the lookout for a story, strikes up a conversation. When the obviously mentally ill Nathaniel mentions that he went to Juilliard, Steve decides to investigate the man's life, and discovers that the onetime cello prodigy suffered a schizophrenic breakdown while he was at the school, leading to a life on the street. Steve proceeds to write a column about Nathaniel, and the overwhelmingly positive response to the story prompts the gift of a cello from a reader. After delivering the present to Nathaniel, Steve slowly finds himself, almost against his nature, trying to make life better for the man.

This kind of movie quickly falls apart if the actors overplay the inherent sadness of the situation, and thankfully the stellar cast never makes that mistake. Although he's become more famous for performances in blockbusters like Iron Man and Tropic Thunder, Downey hasn't lost an ounce of his dramatic chops. He makes Steve selfish and prickly, but also so charming and funny that you understand why his subjects trust him with their life stories. You can also see why his ex-wife (Catherine Keener), who is now his boss, stays close to him even though she left their marriage. Steve begins asking himself why he cares so much about what happens to Nathaniel, questioning his own motivations -- is it really an ongoing act of selfless goodness, or is he just doing it for his career? Steve doesn't find a satisfying answer, until realizing that this new friendship offers the chance for him to become a better person.

As the catalyst for Steve's change, foxx pulls off a disciplined, subtle performance. Foxx isn't interested in earning our pity -- a choice that undermines so many actors playing mentally ill characters. You never question the debilitating nature of Nathaniel's disorder, but you also never question that he's able to take care of himself to the best of his ability, surviving -- however miserably -- in L.A.'s large homeless community. Both he and Downey avoid obvious melodramatic choices, and in doing so they create unfailingly honest portraits of complicated people.

(109 mins.)

My Rating: **1/2

STATE OF PLAY (2009)

Starring: Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams & Helen Mirren

Director: Kevin Macdonald

Director Macdonald successfully revives the 1970s-style paranoid thriller with State Of Play, a taut and assured reworking of the 2003 BBC series of the same name. Paring down the original six-hour series to a lean 127 minutes, Macdonald and screenwriters Carnahan, Gilroy and Ray barely give the audience a moment to breathe as a veteran reporter and a doe-eyed blogger race through the streets of Washington, D.C., to uncover an ominous political conspiracy.

The story gets under way with two seemingly unrelated incidents: the morning after a low-level drug dealer and a pizza deliveryman are gunned down in a dark alley, a congressman's aide is pushed in front of a moving subway train. When the latter is reported as a suicide by the media, speculations of foul play begin to emerge after the aide's boss, rising U.S. congressman Stephen Collins (Affleck), tearfully announces her death on live television. Collins' old college roommate is Cal McAffrey (Crowe), a reporter for the Washington Globe, who openly resents the preferential treatment given to inexperienced underlings likeWashington Globe Capitol Hill blogger Della Frye (McAdams). As the chairman of a committee overseeing defense spending, Congressman Collins is currently on a campaign against rogue government contractors profiting from the "Muslim terror gold rush" abroad. Beholden to no one, these contractors seem increasingly poised to make their presence known in the U.S., where they are gradually gaining a foothold. When McAffrey discovers that the deceased aide was in fact Congressman Collins' primary researcher in the case against the government contractors, suspicions of conspiracy lead him on a treacherous investigation pointing to corruption at the highest levels of government.

State Of Play is the kind of thriller that starts with a bang and throws in enough twists to tie your brain in knots as the layers of deception are stripped away to pose some genuinely frightening questions: Are we already at the point where independent defense contractors can gun down American citizens within the U.S. without fear of repercussion? If so, how could this have happened while U.S. citizens remain fatally unaware? And what could entice soldiers who once defended their country abroad to now set their crosshairs on innocent Americans? Is it really all about the money?

While the primary players are all in top form, it's supporting performances by Mirren, Penn and Bateman that make State Of Play compulsively watchable. Bateman in particular injects the film with a healthy dose of humor and energy in the third act, when he appears in the role of a pill-head PR agent who could hold the key to blowing the entire investigation wide open. A rare treat for cinema lovers starved for the days when scruffy newspaper reporters fearlessly sniffed out corruption, State Of Play delivers the kind of conspiratorial thrills that would have made Pakula proud. (127 mins.)

My Rating: ***1/2