Dog bites man

Rating: 7/10 (10 June 2007)

At first glance, so to speak, it might be hard to see where the drama lies in the Ray Charles story. A successful musician makes a lot of records, takes a lot of drugs and sleeps with a lot of women: big deal. But of course, what makes this extraordinary is that Charles was blind. Even so, 'Ray' struggles to make this seem as amazing as it sounds. In part this is because (as the film suggests) that Charles was astonishingly adept at dealing with his blindness, but in part he managed this by becoming quite a hard personality. But it's also a problem with the notion of the biopic itself; we get an even succession of musical triumphs, linked together by much expository dialogue, before a conclusion centring on his attempts to kick his heroin addiction. And although Charles' talent was to master many styles, the story of each innovation is pretty much identical to its predecessor. The film is saved by some fine acting; but maybe it didn't need to be quite so long.