Ray

I saw Ray Charles live just once. He was great but Brother Ray was onstage for a good time, not a long time. It was a short but sweet set suggesting he was on a fairly good hourly rate. Watching this film of his life, you can see he probably deserved it.

The other memory of seeing Charles was that for a man who performed sitting down, that cat sure could dance.

Same goes for Foxx who plays Charles in this conventional but irresistible biopic of the man. That cat sure can dance, too. Just like Ray. And you can't take your eyes off him.

Musical biopics have often delivered performances that impress in the same way Elvis impersonators do, usually in movies straining to get to the essence of their subject.

Foxx's performance makes this something else. And the film lives up to his portrayal.

It does the predictable showbiz profile things as it swings from the tragic beginnings through to the first flush of success through to the self-destruction to the inevitable redemption.

But that's just it - it swings. Right from the opening credits through to the happily-ever-after ending some time in the late 70s, Ray uses Charles' music as narrative rocket fuel, helping Charles' story as it's delivered in a disarming but assured non-linear way.

In many an earlier musical biopic, it's always helped if the figures have gone before their time - it sure tidies up the ending. Charles, of course, didn't. He died last year having already stamped his approval on this largely warts'n'all film by uncelebrated veteran American director Taylor Hackford.

So yes, it runs a little long and it falls short of being as candid as Charles' autobiography Brother Ray. Though, it still reminds us that this beloved entertainer was a long-time junkie, an increasingly unforgiving boss and a real shit of a man when it came to women. That's whether it was his wife B (Regina King) or the various Ray-lettes he had as on-the-road mistresses.

The film is still riveting even without Foxx on screen as it takes us back to his poor boyhood in North Florida, where, traumatised by his little brother's drowning in a washtub, he eventually goes blind to glaucoma.

Those scenes are shot in vivid colours, as they might have appeared in Charles' memory of the years when he could still see. The piano-playing bug bites, the tough love of his mother Aretha makes him no one's cripple, and the young adult Charles is soon on his way to Seattle and on to that great, influential career.

That professional life is illuminated neatly. We see Charles starting out in the studio, still mimicking Nat King Cole and other acceptable voices of his day.

We see him suffer a backlash when he sacrilegiously combines gospel and R&B. Then when he goes country he's accused of being a sell-out. At the same time he gets a better deal from a major record label than Sinatra ever managed.

We see him invent What'd I Say on the spot because one night his set is running under time. And he comes up with Hit the Road Jack in the middle of a domestic row. Neither really happened. But watching how the film marries the music married to those moments, it doesn't really matter. It's too damn exciting.

Yes, it does sag towards the end and song-wise it reminds us that Charles had only 20 good years in him. And it's probably flawed in its details as all biopics inevitably are.

But none of that stops Ray from being far more than just a fitting tribute to Charles or a platform for a career-defining performance from Foxx. It's just a great film, and almost as good with the eyes closed.

CAST: Jamie Foxx

DIRECTOR: Taylor Hackford

RATING: M (drug use)

RUNNING TIME: 152 mins

SCREENING: Village, Hoyts, Berkeley cinemas from Thursday