Kudos to Jaime Foxx

Rating: 8/10 (6 January 2005)

I like to see when actors who have been in the background and scraping it to make it finally get their break. This was it for Jaime Foxx. What a performance! I doubt he'll get the Oscar, because dumb and never-watched movies except by Academy elite will win as they usually do. I see a "Finding Neverland" upset at the Oscars, but I digress. I found it very difficult to not see Ray Charles in Jaime. He was so into the part: the facial expressions, the laugh, the voice...it was all pleasantly reminiscent of the wonderful and talented musician. To this day, I'm a little confused as to how a blind man can have a heroin addiction, but hey, he wouldn't let his disability stop him from tasting any form of life I see. I just think someone had to be helping him aim the needle. I wouldn't want a nurse giving me an injection blindfolded without some guidance, you feel me? Anyways, the movie was a little long, but you got to know about someone who spent most of their life in the public eye, but never truly knowing much about them because you're too young to appreciate them or because you won't find out until they die. He was a phenomenal talent that didn't let anything stop him, and that's the miracle of life and the human spirit. I liked the angle of his mother being a guiding force in his life and the lifelong guilt he felt for his brother's death. It tied in everything he was dealing with and how he handled life, the decisions he made.
The character of his mother being so tough was heart wrenchingly realistic. She was a poor sharecropper and a single mother. She didn't have the time to beg for handouts and have "crippled" children. Her tough love really resonated to me the spirit of the black women throughout history. What some might call emasculating, I call realistic and wise. I loved the scene where he was learning to see with his ears and she just watched him as he screamed and cried for her help. He finally stood up and learned to see with his ears and could hear her proud weeping as she watched him catch a cricket and simply said, "I hear you mama. You're right here." That brought me to tears! Every actor was fit for their role in this film. The children, the musicians, the producers, the women in his life, all slipped cleanly into their parts. This is an exceptional film.