Review: Ray

Posted by: Tom Milroy  •  October 29, 2004 @ 11:59am

Filed under: Reviews

I've never met Ray Charles and never seen him perform, but he must have been a lot like Jamie Foxx. Mister Foxx becomes Ray Charles in the biopic Ray.

I'm not the biggest fan of the director â€" Taylor Hackford can be a bit of a hack. Item â€" Proof of Life with Russell Crowe and Meg Ryan. But in Ray, he lets Foxx do all the acting and performing.

The movie is uplifting in the old-fashioned way. How could a man like Ray Charles manage to carry-on despite all the adversities in his life? His father was not around, he watched his brother drown, and of course, not long after, he lost his sight. Ray is not a glossed-over piece of revisionist history, either. Charles was quite the ladies' man and basically carried on another life while on the road. And judging by the movie, that was nearly all the time.

The movie offers some nice supporting work from Regina King (Jerry Maguire), Curtis Armstrong (Risky Business), and Richard Schiff (The West Wing). The latter two play real life record executives Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler.

At 152 minutes, Ray just flies by and that's always a good sign. By the way, this is not just a movie for fans of Ray Charles, it's a movie about the human spirit. It's too bad Ray Charles passed away before the movie's release. I'm sure he would have liked it.