Starring: Jamie Foxx, Regina King, Kerry Washington

8 out of 10: Knock one category off your Oscars ballot. Jamie Foxx's portrayal of Ray Charles will win Best Actor for 2004. His convincing, comprehensive turn as the beloved entertainer is right up there with the great autobiographical performances, such as Sissy Spacek in Coal Miner's Daughter, or, even, Robert De Niro as Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull. Foxx sheds light onto a person we thought we knew or, at least gives an emotional insight into the person that Foxx and director Taylor Hackford saw and thought they knew.

Ray the movie, is not as wholly convincing, nor complete as Foxx's singular performance. A solid picture for almost its entire length it stumbles near the end with a finish that seems abrupt and too simplistic for its own good. After asking audiences to partake in Charles's life, for good and ill, it relies on a "hip-hip-huzzah" Scent of a Woman finale that relies on and plays into the very stereotypes and caricatures of Ray Charles that the movie spent the last two hours exploding.

Well, actually, there's no real exploding in Ray. It's the story of one incredibly talented and determined man's efforts to rise from humble roots to make his fame and fortune, not storm the beaches of Normandy. But when we first meet a young Ray Charles Robinson (Foxx), on his way from the deep South to Seattle. he says he's exactly that, a veteran of D-Day who lost his sight in the conflict. It's actually a fib to successfully turn a racist busdriver into a useful confederate and it sets the tone for the way Ray outsmarts nearly every opponent in the film.

In this way Foxx and Hackford make Charles's blindness a useful prop, instead of a crutch. It's part of understanding the man's persona, like being black was part of Othello's character or being old part of Lear's. According to Hackford that's what the real Ray Charles was like, a man with such acute perception to his surroundings and senses that he seemed sighted. Foxx's Charles seems sighted as well, a musician trying to make his way instead of a blind man trying to triumph. As a musician, Charles is prone to the typical traps of the trade; shady managers, dangerous liaisons, life on the road, and drug abuse. Charles's use and subsequent addiction to heroin takes up a decent measure of the film. Hackford skillfully manages to avoid this section being preachy. Given that VH1's "Behind the Music" has done the "up-and-downs" of every person that sang in the shower in the last thirty years it's a testament to Hackford and White that none of this feels dog-eared or worn-out.

But then again the whole cast is top notch. When you have an acting marvel like Terrence Howard in a short walk-on role you know there's almost too much talent available to Hackford, The equally awfully talented Larenz Tate plays the youthful Quincy Jones, a struggling artist Ray meets in Seattle and the compelling and strong Regina King makes backup singer Margie Hendrick, with whom Charles had a longstanding and destructive affair, more than just a home wrecker and more than just a woman wronged (though she becomes a footnote in the film).

Also of note is newcomer Sharon Warren who lands the dream role of Aretha Robinson, Ray's mother. Her wiry stern presence is the driving force behind the narrative, from the guilt she heaps on him in association with a childhood tragedy to her determination to make him independent Warren's Aretha is the bedrock of this more than serviceable film.