Review: Ray
The movie lived up to the hype. And that’s saying quite a bit.
Jamie Foxx did an unbelievably good Ray Charles. By the end there were literally a couple of scenes where I questioned whether it was Foxx or Charles himself on screen. Amazing work.
The music was, of course, excellent.
There were only two disappointments:
- The movie only covered up to the 70’s. It quickly glossed over the remainder of his career (and life) with one further scene and some on screen text. I understand that the drama was really in his rise and battling his drug addiction and inner demons, but sue me — I wanted more. I wanted to know how his life changed after he kicked the addiction. Did he stop cheating on his wife, for example?
- Blockbuster Online didn’t send me the bonus disc. After seeing the movie, I really wanted to check those out. Guess I’ll have to use a free in-store rental to get that.
I already knew the guy was a musical genius, but this movie really reinforced that and gave me a great perspective on his life (or at least part of it). The guy was no saint, that’s for sure. It was very interesting to see how events in his life informed his songs.
Overall, I’d say this movie deserved every bit of praise it garnered.
Tags: film, music, Reviews
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January 7th, 2007 at 1:29 am
[...] The first thing that struck me after the movie was how similar it was to Ray in structure. Famous musician starts off life dirt poor, his brother gets killed and he feels guilt about it (which haunts him all his life), he enters the music scene years later, get introduced to drugs, gets famous, gets addicted to the drugs, cheats on his wife, falls in love with another woman, gets arrested for the drugs, gets clean, and lives happy. Both movies end at seminal events long before the performer’s death. But the way those same beats all played out in the two movies were vastly different. The focus in Ray was how he beat his inner demons and their effects. The focus in Walk the Line was Johnny pursuing June, and the addiction, while integral to that story, was secondary. I think Ray had me more emotionally invested, but I enjoyed Walk the Line more. Though they went through some very similar experiences and made some of the same horrible choices, I felt myself pulling more for Johnny Cash than I did for Ray Charles because Cash was moving toward something, while Charles was trying to escape. (See also Bryce Zabel’s comparison of the films in his Movie Smackdown series.) [...]