Ray

Piano man: Jaimie Foxx shines as Ray, but the script stumbles

By Jeannette Catsoulis

On the evidence of Ray--and earlier this year with Michael Mann's Collateral--it's clear that Jamie Foxx has officially broken through as a serious actor, leaving Will Smith and Cuba Gooding Jr. choking on his dust. More than that, the next Best Actor Oscar is probably already in the process of being engraved. But as the credits roll over the film's final, excruciatingly maudlin scene, the question we have to face is: Is Ray worthy of its leading man?

The answer is, regrettably, no. But as long as you keep your eyes on Foxx, it's possible not to notice the trite, by-the-numbers approach of Taylor Hackford's film--or the 152-minute running time, which he uses so poorly that he has to choke off the action 40 years before Charles' death. Despite having to endure painful prosthetics for up to 14 hours a day during filming, Foxx does something amazing with this role, embodying the legendary performer so completely in look, mannerism and speaking voice that he magnetizes our gaze. It's an astonishing performance, at once reverent and brutal. Will Smith might have played Muhammad Ali, but Jamie Foxx is Ray Charles.

Yet the film lets him down in a number of ways. With more thoroughness than imagination, Hackford ticks off the major plot points of Charles' early life: a dirt-poor Georgia childhood dominated by his formidable single mother, Aretha (a fine Sharon Warren in a tough-lovin' black-mama stereotype); witnessing his younger brother's death and, soon after, blindness at age 7. These scenes, appearing as flashbacks in eyeball-searing tones--the dirt roads are the color of ripe cantaloupe--make the same mistake Spielberg made with The Color Purple: presenting harrowing emotional events like picture postcards of the Old South. The impulse to romanticize suffering is one Hackford (An Officer and a Gentleman) has rarely resisted.

By the 1950s, Charles is playing in country bands on the so-called "Chitlin Circuit" and being liberally exploited by those who have no qualms about stealing from the blind. He learns to insist on being paid in singles to avoid being cheated. He also learns to silence his demons with regular doses of heroin. By the time he's signed to Atlantic Records, he's a full-blown addict, a married man and well on the way to becoming a superstar. Ignoring accusations of "making money off the Lord," Charles' fusion of R&B and gospel music is pure dynamite; and it's in these lovingly re-created scenes--the clubs, the concerts, the recording sessions--that the movie catches fire. Just as he did with Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll, Hackford allows his love of music to guide the action, trusting the songs to provide the emotion. And they do, beautifully.

With strong supporting performances from Kerry Washington as Charles' long-suffering wife, Della Bea, and Regina King as his longtime lover and backup singer, Margie Hendricks, Ray handles its subject's tumultuous sex life with old-fashioned delicacy. Until his death in June of this year, Charles himself was an adviser on the film, and there is certainly some whitewashing (more than a dozen illegitimate children are tidily condensed to one, for example, and Charles' drug arrests slide by with the minimum of fuss). But the film faces head-on the singer's emotional coldness and inability to trust, giving no more emphasis to his stand against Jim Crow laws than his ruthless business dealings.

An accomplished pianist, Foxx lip-synchs Charles' vocals but does his own playing--a feat that no doubt helped his immersion in the character. And despite Hackford's ham-handed and overcooked portrayals of psychological torment (a fake-looking rehab sequence, and recurring water-logged images), Foxx never overplays the terrors of the man who claimed always to be "alone in the dark."