TV Movie With Cinematic Star !

Rating: Null/10 (21 June 2009)

Although it did a good job, but I had to hate this script. The main conflict here is (Ray)'s belief that he accidentally killed his younger brother. So he went to drugs to just escape this incredible pain. Therefore, the man got himself in 2 lives; one where he's supposedly balanced as a husband and father, and another where he has the artist in him perfectly, with bohemian living, mistresses, and drugs. Accordingly, the movie just finds purgation for its lead when he finally makes peace with his original pain, and believes that he got no hand in killing his breather (read: Pure Nonsense!).
The peacemaking scene, which's the movie's climax, was really weak and totally unconvincing. The script wanted to abbreviate the whole psychotherapy in one artistic scene, OK, but in the same time, I didn't understand How or Why his dead brother hugged him, acquitting him from the crime: "You didn't do it"??!! Not to mention that originally I wasn't satisfy with this complex as the character's main problem.
(Ray Charles), who I knew from this very movie, was a man with 2 dilemmas. He couldn't live peacefully with his conservative wife, being a good sober father. And he couldn't live "madness all the time" with his mistress. He even was traditional at times, and a historically revolutionary at others. So the main conflict wasn't about a man and his inner pain concerning his dead brother inasmuch as other ones concerning: being himself or any other, living the guaranteed or being that adventurer, needing love and family to live stability vs. needing sex and drugs to make art, suffering from the dark or leading everybody!
This script provoked me even at minor points. For instance, when the wife blames her junky husband as someone who doesn't care about his kids, she tells a story about a trophy that the son has won, and his too drunken father who didn't see it; why we didn't watch such an important accident and cinematic moment?!! Moreover, why the character of the loyal wife was out of the picture for most of the time? For someone who doesn't know the real happenings, such as me, I thought that the woman divorced him, and this movie didn't have the time to declare it! I needed to observe her reaction to all of his works, especially his other unchained life.
And I couldn't understand the matter of firing the assistant near the end. So he made a secret business for his own, and (Ray) doesn't want someone that deals with him as a "blind", however we already knew that by heart when (Ray) rebelled against his 2 monopolists at the start, so why to repeat it?!, particularly in a movie that doesn't find something fair to end itself with; the incomprehensible - very easy - forgiveness of his brother, a sudden tasteless board, some award, a stock shot.. and that's it! Actually, you have to feel how strangely laconic that was.
(Ray) was revolutionary, but this movie is not. It's still a good movie though. The direction got its moments, but it's clear that the man's extraordinary life hasn't been treated extraordinarily. I was sad that it wasn't made for TV. It got all the aspects of a TV biography, except the performance. (Jamie Foxx) isn't a magician, he's magic; mimicking the character to a scary extent sometimes, while living the personality as well. He won the Oscar already; however, with a better script he, with us, would've won smarter movie about (Ray Charles).