Ray (Cert 15, 152 mins) Stars Jamie Foxx, Kerry Washington, Regina King, Aunjanue Ellis, Sharon Warren and Clifton Brown Directed by Taylor Hackford
RAY CHARLES, that's who we are talking about. The blues and soul singer who died last year and who is now considered iconic enough for a film on his life to use just his first name.
As the film makes clear, his real name was Ray Robinson but he was forced to change it for fear of being confused with the boxer Sugar Ray Robinson. Charles was the singer's middle name.
Director Taylor Hackford's biopic is made up of such snippets of information and satisfyingly tends to follow the Charles story in more or less chronological order.
The flashbacks to his youth are placed in the right context so we can follow the Charles story from his poor upbringing in Florida to final triumph, as Georgia adopts his version of the song Georgia as its state song.
Along the way we find Charles fighting racism, taking drugs and sleeping with a vast series of women despite his marriage.
This is one of those warts and all biographies even though Charles himself helped the film-makers (it's his voice delivering most of the song numbers).
Jamie Foxx, a one-time stand-up comedian, does a terrific job as Charles, producing not only a lookalike performance particularly when in concert, but capturing the emotional moods of the man.
It could not have been an easy job - Charles had an ego and was not always an easy man to like - but somehow he attracts sympathy for the singer/musician.
He was a complex figure and Foxx, with the help of James L White's screenplay, captures that complexity.
The childhood scenes are particularly impressive with a towering performance from Sharon Warren as his strong-minded mother who had to cope with the death of Ray's brother, as well as Ray's developing blindness at the age of seven.
