Ray: 10/10

Rating: 10/10 (2 November 2004)

Ray Charles was one of those performers who always seemed joyful. Whenever he performed one of his songs, his jovial qualities seemed to pass onto you, and you felt great. Of course, on the inside, Charles was dealing with his own inner demons, as shown in Ray. Approved by Charles himself before he died, the movie shows both side of Charles-the good and the bad. The film doesn't go as far as to glamorize Charles, nor does it make him out to be some sort of beast. He's just stuck in the middle, which is the way most people are.
Ray Charles Robinson (Jamie Foxx) grows up in the poor south. He lives with his single mother (Sharon Warren) and his younger brother, who goes through a traumatic death. Ray soon becomes blind, and learns the piano. His career slowly takes off, and then zooms to popularity. Along for the ride is his wife (Kerry Washington), who goes through his heroin addiction and his womanizing on the road.
The reason why I gave Ray such a high rating, you ask? Simply because there's not one thing wrong with it. The writing, directing, acting, cinematography, music, editing-everything is perfect in the best movie of the year so far. First, the directing. Taylor Hackford, known for such movies as Dolores Claireborn and The Devil's Advocate, directs the movie in a unique style. He has flashbacks to Charles's childhood early and often, and instead of having them be disjointed and unnecessary, Hackford creates it perfectly, timing everything perfectly so it all flows together in a meaningful way. The movie, despite its long runtime, doesn't meander at all, thanks to Hackford's direction. The way each shot was created, the seeming perfectionist way it was done, leads Ray to have some of the best direction in recent years.
Written by Hackford and James L. White, it seems like the movie is based off of something that was quite detailed, that the two had to whittle down a lot of Charles's life just to get it in the two-and-a-half hour zone for a movie. Yet the movie was never, ever boring. The 150 minutes flew by quickly, and my butt wasn't even in pain. That's the sign of an involving, intimate movie. Where you can watch it for as long as it goes on, lose all sense of time, and get wrapped up in whatever's going on. And, since Hackford co-wrote the movie, he knows what he can and can't do with the script. The writing and directing really go hand in hand here.
Jamie Foxx, who, before I saw Ray, put in the best acting job of the year as Max in Collateral, puts in the best acting job of the year here. Foxx does such a good job that everyone forgot that it wasn't actually Ray Charles being himself. All of the imitations of Charles were dead-on. Foxx had to go through a grueling breakdown by Charles, and Foxx was actually blinded for most of the shoot. It's this method acting that really makes Foxx Charles. Washington, who "broke out", so to speak, in Spike Lee's She Hate Me, does a great job here, also, although her performance is a little overshadowed by Foxx's. Still, both of them are multilayered performances.
The movie as a whole is also amazing. It's the combination of Charles's music with everything mentioned here that makes Ray such a powerful movie. We see his transition from coming up from the dregs of society to become one of America's top entertainers, and his crusade for equal rights. A movie that doesn't shy from the dark side of things is a hell of a lot more inspirational than some inner-city sports movie. All in all, I'd like to say that Ray may very well be the best movie of the year, and I'd like to congratulate Jamie Foxx on his Oscar win.
My rating: 10/10
Rated PG-13 for depiction of drug addiction, sexuality and some thematic elements.