Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #44127 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-02-01
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Limited Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, Surround Sound, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Spanish, French
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 152 minutes

Amazon.com
Jamie Foxx's uncannily accurate performance isn't the only good thing about Ray. Riding high on a wave of Oscar buzz, Foxx proved himself worthy of all the hype by portraying blind R&B legend Ray Charles in a warts-and-all performance that Charles approved shortly before his death in June 2004. Despite a few dramatic embellishments of actual incidents (such as the suggestion that the accidental drowning of Charles's younger brother caused all the inner demons that Charles would battle into adulthood), the film does a remarkable job of summarizing Charles's strengths as a musical innovator and his weaknesses as a philandering heroin addict who recorded some of his best songs while flying high as a kite. Foxx seems to be channeling Charles himself, and as he did with the life of Ritchie Valens in La Bamba, director Taylor Hackford gets most of the period details absolutely right as he chronicles Ray's rise from "chitlin circuit" performer in the early '50s to his much-deserved elevation to legendary status as one of the all-time great musicians. Foxx expertly lip-syncs to Ray Charles' classic recordings, but you could swear he's the real deal in a film that honors Ray Charles without sanitizing his once-messy life. --Jeff Shannon --This text refers to the Theatrical Release edition.

More on Ray Charles

Modern Sounds In Country and Western Music (CD)	The Genius of Ray Charles (CD)	Ray Charles and Betty Carter--Dedicated to You (CD)
Genius & Soul--The 50th Anniversary Collection (CD)	Ray: A Tribute to the Movie, the Music, and the Man (book)	More Albums by Ray Charles

From The New Yorker
Swaying from side to side, his back arched almost to the point of snapping, Jamie Foxx, as Ray Charles, seems pulled upward to the heavens and downward to the keys at the same time. This intelligent and tough-minded bio-pic, written by James L. White and Taylor Hackford and directed by Hackford, tells us a lot about Charles, but it doesn't tell us everything. Though properly awed by Charles's talent, "Ray" refuses to get chummy or possessive. The movie picks up Charles's story in the late forties, when he's an ambitious but wary teen-age musician, and carries him through his musical innovations and his personal pleasures and torments until 1964, when he's a world-famous artist and a miserable heroin addict. There's something both joyous and demonic about this guy, an insatiable energy in his insistence on driving soul and country sounds into the beats of R. & B. For many older people in the audience, the sound of Ray Charles's music is inseparable from memories of dating, dancing, lovemaking, and loss. The movie has the bold good grace to honor the enraptured kids they once were and the sterner but still hungry grownups they became. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Everybody deserved an Oscar for his/her roles in this movie.
This movie is absolutely superb. Everybody gave more than 100%, and it showed. Regina King was awesome!!!! I highly recommend this biopic of the legendary Ray Charles.

"Ray" is OK
"Ray" is what I would describe as a standard Hollywood version of a high budget biography film. What makes this movie special is the subject; Ray Charles. We get a somewhat complex picture of Ray Charles with interspersed flash backs to give us "deep background". It was generally known that Mr. Charles had his weakness for drugs but I didn't realize how strong the addiction was. The acting is very good but I had a real problem understanding much of the dialogue of Jimmie Foxx; the actor who plays Mr. Charles. I don't recall Ray Charles as a mumbler although I don't know that I saw him all that much in interviews or talk shows. However, if it was the was he spoke, there was no need to put that into the movie and leave many in the audience scratching their heads and wondering what he said. For this he won the Best Actor Oscar? What is the key to "Ray" is the music. It was well presented and I was singing to myself for days after. Enjoy the music and see if you can get subtitles.

Ray: Miss the Movie, Hear the Music
In the opening scene of the 2004 docudrama "Ray" we see a tree hung with bottles to trap evil spirits, and Ray's mom Aretha telling him "Don't let nothin' or nobody make you no cripple." He didn't, but director Taylor Hackford did. It's certainly tough for anyone to tranform the 73 year life of the genius of Ray Charles into a two hour movie and make it work. Still, a whole lot more of that great music and a whole lot less of his failings would have gone a long way toward fixing a movie more interested in the evil in the bottles than the beauty of their sound.

Through a series of flashbacks, done in the vivid color of the then-seeing Ray, we learn about his personal "demons". Well, the first of them anyway. At the age of 5 he saw his brother drown, although in autobiographies he tells of trying to get him out unsuccessfully. Water seems to follow screen Ray everywhere after that, done to death at the mercilessly artful hands of Hackford. In an autobiography, Mr. Charles said that although the tragedies of losing his brother and then his mother were the worst things in his life, they were "strangely enough, extraordinarily positive for me." Typical, remarkable Ray. It wasn't the guilt, but the humility and drive that made Ray, RAY.

There are scenes of great courage and strength, especially those involving his mother, Aretha, played with amazing poise by actress Sharon Warren. These scenes go a long way to helping the movie because we get a sense of where Ray got his inner voice, the voice that helped him become and play and sing and "see". Jamie Foxx is totally believable in his role as Ray Charles. It's his fingers we see playing, and his eyes we believe really cannot see. Curtis Armstrong gives a fine performance as Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic Records, the man who saw the spark and encouraged the originality of the flame in Charles's music.

Ray Charles had some remarkable people in his life. He was a magnet for them through his music and his can-do attitude. Hackford, however, tries to convince us that he was much more a magnet for his vices: heroin and women. We're shown the sweet Ray and talented Ray, then lots and lots of the broken, addicted, nasty Ray. Oh, and then there's some music, too. The great songs are in there, of course, "Hit the Road, Jack", "What'd I say", "It's All Right" and some others. But we're talking about an original inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, creator of over 250 albums, and the inventor of Soul. Hollywood moral: Music is nice, but drugs sell tickets.

Taylor Hackford describes the movie he has made as an "odyssey" with "certain events fictionalized" and "condensed". To those, I'd have to say "for whom?", "no kidding" and "miniaturized". It sugar-coats the ending with kicking his drug habit, dealing with his brother's death and making up with his wife (who he later divorced) all in the last five minutes. And the last 40 years of his life, when some of his best work was produced? Read about it in the blurbs at the bottom while you watch the credits.

In truth, this docudrama serves to introduce Ray "The Genius" Charles to people who, bizarrely, may not know of him. While he overcame the potentially crippling effects of tragedy, blindness, racism, drug abuse, and infidelity, a proper "life story" of this man should focus on his real triumph--his music. Mr. Hackford should remember Aretha's words to Ray at the end of the movie: "You may be blind, but you ain't stupid." Neither are we.