The larger image wasn't available which would give me (us) more to work with so his skin still looks a little patchy. This was achieved with liberal use of the patch tool and then sampling and adding color to the region, finally some work on the red channel. I did no skin softening at all besides attempting to rectify the acne. It's still a little patchy for my tastes but I have to go to work now.
What I would probably do after this would be to patch in skin from the neck to even the cheek out a bit. Lot of work to be done on this image, but I think it's doable.