Viewed: 20 February 2006
Directed by: Taylor Hackford
Listed in: Movies, Library

Ray spends two hours before it gets to something truly interesting, when Charles refused to play a segregated show in Georgia. An action which got him banned from the state. Yet the movie treats it as a footnote, to the much more important heroin story. It’s the same musician hard-times, misunderstood, drug addiction and finally redemption before its too late biopic (of course they don’t seem to ever show the time after drugs). Jamie Foxx is excellent as Ray Charles and the film shows actual photographs and footage of Ray Charles at the end (which most biopics avoid like the plague), but it feels like the cliff notes version of Charles’ life.