Overall Rating
 Awesome: 26.62%
Worth A Look: 53.96%
Average: 12.23%
Pretty Bad: 5.04%
Total Crap: 2.16%
10 reviews, 79 user ratings
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| Ray |
by Loey Lockerby
"The man, but mostly his music."
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The fatal flaw in many biographical films is how little they tell you about why the people they portray mattered. You get all the affairs and personal problems, maybe some Hallmark-card inspirational messages, but no real sense of the genius that would make a person worth doing a whole movie about. Maybe it’s just too difficult to convey something that complicated while still hitting all the big life moments.“Ray” is an extremely watchable exception to this rule. Director Taylor Hackford captures Ray Charles’ creativity and his impact on the recording industry so well, it should be required viewing for anyone interested in the development of 20th century American music. This isn’t just a collection of performances strung together – this is the essence of great musical innovation.
The life-story stuff is a little shakier, in part because Charles is obviously a very difficult character to explain. He grew up dirt poor in rural Florida, lost his younger brother in a drowning accident (for which he seems to have held himself responsible), went blind at age 7, faced racism throughout his life, experienced one tumultuous marriage and several affairs, and ended up addicted to heroin. And that’s just the material Hackford does cover in his 2 ˝ hour running time. He skips a lot, including the last 30 years or so of Charles’ life. It’s almost as if Hackford started to make an 8-hour miniseries, then stopped abruptly when he remembered that it needed to be feature length.
This means we get quite a bit of detail about Charles’ early life and career, and Hackford doesn’t shy away from some of the man’s more unsavory behavior. He treats women like dirt, including his long-suffering wife (Kerry Washington), who inexplicably stays with him despite his drug abuse and constant infidelity. He’s so focused on his music, he virtually ignores everything else, including his relationships with his children and some long-time friends.
Hackford attempts to explain Charles’ motivations through the use of flashbacks and visions, mostly of his determined single mother, who pushed and inspired him to make a life for himself despite his disability. Some of this is effective, but it becomes more and more cornball as it goes along, until it nearly derails what is supposed to be the film’s dramatic climax. It’s a bad idea that just gets worse.
You may notice that I haven’t mentioned Jamie Foxx’s performance yet. What is there to say that hasn’t already appeared in countless other reviews? Foxx is extraordinary, not only in his ability to mimic Charles’ voice and mannerisms, but also in how he captures his fierce, contradictory personality. Anything the script lacks in psychological depth, Foxx makes up for, with interest. If there were any doubts about his acting ability after “Ali” and “Collateral” (and there really shouldn’t have been), “Ray” will obliterate them.
The rest of the large cast is impressive, too, so Foxx doesn’t have to carry the film alone. It is very much his movie, though, and it’s actually hard to imagine anyone else being up to the job. Fortunately, he doesn’t get stuck trying to shoulder a lousy script or bad direction.“Ray” may not be as brilliant and complex as its subject, but it still puts on a hell of a show.
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link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=10361&reviewer=380
originally posted: 11/04/04 02:41:31
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OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2004 Starz Denver Film Festival. For more in the 2004 Starz Denver Film Festival series, click here.
OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2004 Toronto Film Festival. For more in the 2004 Toronto Film Festival series, click here.
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USA
29-Oct-2004 (PG-13)
DVD: 01-Feb-2005
UK
N/A
Australia
26-Jan-2005
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