Robert Downey Jr. plays a Los Angeles Times columnist in “The Soloist,” which to my knowledge is the very first Hollywood movie to make reference to the ongoing readership and fianncial crisis in the newspaper industry. Very early on in a film set in 2005, someone announces that 40 percent of readers under 35 don’t read newspapers. Later, we hear an off-screen editor — possibly Downey’s ex-wife (Cathleen Keener) giving somebody notice. And there is a shot of a poor laid-off Times employee being escorted out with her belongings by a security guard during one of the LAT’s many staff reductions in recent years. The film opens in two weeks, so I have plenty of time to try and figure out exactly what this has to do with the Downey character — whose job is apparently secure though his work habits leave a lot to be desired — and his efforts to help a homeless man (Jamie Foxx) who’s a musical genius. “Maybe they’re trying to appeal to movie critics,” quipped one ink-stained wretch after a screening yesterday afternoon. But what about the gopher racoon subplot?