Ray

Actor Jamie Foxx won an Oscar for his portrayal of Ray Charles.

Herald rating: * * * * *

In the end it's all about the Voice. This sprawling, riotous, brooding, pained, cocky biopic takes more than 2 1/2 hours (and there could have been much more) and two actors and a cast of thousands to tell most of the story of Ray Charles (give or take his last 40, comparatively unproductive years).

Charles was involved with the project for 15 years until his death last year, so we have to assume that Taylor Hackford's warts, women, heroin and all story is the way that Brother Ray wanted to be remembered. It ain't a particularly nice picture. Fortunately, the film-maker had the rights to his music, so that is him up there on the soundtrack and at the end, the music is all that matters.

Writer-director Hackford's take on Charles is that he saw his little brother drown in the bathroom and stood, rooted to the spot, unable to do anything. Two years later he went blind and the memory haunted the entertainer for the rest of his life. Psychologically possible, ophthalmologically unlikely: Ray's sight had been declining from age 5 until he lost it, to glaucoma, at age 9.

Driving force for the young Ray Charles Robinson (C. J. Sanders) was his mother Aretha (Sharon Warren). She made him dream, made him set goals, made him go to a school for the blind. The emerging musician (now played by Jamie Foxx in his Oscar-winning turn) heads for Seattle's club scene.

There he meets two men who will affect his career for good and ill: the musical giant Quincy Jones (Larenz Tate), with whom he developed what became soul music, and the dwarf MC Oberon (Warwick Davis), who introduced him to drugs. Neither needed to introduce him to his other addiction, women.

The movie follows Charles' career ups and downs, his battle with drugs that lasted until he got clean around 1966, and his on- and off-stage affairs. It is clear that the most important woman is his wife Della Bea (Kerry Washington), who knows what's happening on tour, and that it doesn't always stay on tour.

Foxx's performance is astounding, a remarkable recreation of a dominating presence in popular music for 60 years, fresh in the minds of a generation that knows him only from The Blues Brothers.

The 2-disk DVD includes an extended version of the movie, which adds another 25 minutes and even more confusion to the tale. Apparently rushed into production, it seems to have bypassed the editing and quality control desks, has 14 deleted scenes and two extended musical sequences: What Kind Of Man Are You? and Hit The Road Jack.

Foxx's preparations for the role are outlined in Step Into The Part, where he talks about going to college on a piano-playing scholarship, and being blind for 12-14 hours a day on set, due to the eye prosthetics.

Hackford's commentary explains the 15-year project and that he built the story around Charles' guilt because he'd got that interpretation from the star. And apart from gushing tributes to the great man, that's all.

* Rental video, dvd out now