Ray : Movie Review


Ray (2004) - Movie PosterTaylor Hackford's Ray has a tremendous performance by Jamie Foxx and a soundtrack that is jammed with recordings by the late Ray Charles, but both work in service of a paint-by-numbers screenplay that runs too long and could have been developed in Biopic 101. This is a stagnant motion picture that runs out of energy well before the halfway point, then staggers through the seemingly interminable final hour. The movie may only be 2 1/2 hours in length, but it seems to take a lot longer to cover less than two decades of Charles' life. Some critics are being surprisingly kind to this movie, which may indicate that they're afraid criticism of the movie will somehow be seen as criticism of Ray Charles. Such thinking is flawed. Charles was a great artist; Ray is far from a great film.



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Author : James Berardinelli