Sympathy for Delicious

Grounded by a first-rate cast and its gritty Los Angeles environment, Sympathy for Delicious earnestly explores how one man's existential anger warps everyone around him. "Delicious" Dean O'Dwyer (Christopher Thornton) is a rising DJ until a motorcycle accident leaves him wheelchair-bound and homeless on Skid Row. Dean's misanthropy is made worse by his O'Henry-esque dilemma of being able to heal everyone but himself, and by the laudable, but misguided, actions of pious Father Joe (Mark Ruffalo, making his directorial debut). By the time Dean joins up with Burn the Diphthong, a pretentiously messy rock band fronted by a preening Orlando Bloom, it's obvious that no one is immune to the temptations presented by his healing hands. Thornton, who spent a decade working on the script with Ruffalo, is a visceral presence in an ensemble that includes an authentically sleazy Juliette Lewis as pill-popping guitarist Ariel and Laura Linney as a calculating tour manager. A tragic turn of events at a widely hyped concert foreshadows a chain reaction that injects the film with much-needed urgency and telegraphs both Dean and Joe's fates. Ruffalo's sincerity and eye for poetic imagery makes Sympathy for Delicious an ode to a city filled with troubled souls and those who want to help, but don't know how.