by the number and oscar hungry biopic about the late and great singer ray charles . there be one exactly one great scene in ray . it occur during a flashback to charles youth and after the boy become completely blind . run into the sharecropper house which he share with his mother and he trip over a chair and sprawl on the floor . he cry out for his mother while she and in keep with her philosophy that a person should stand on their own two foot and observes silently and pensively from the kitchen and wait to see if the boy can fall back on his own resource . the boy prove to be up to the challenge and use his ear and memory to locate a kettle on a stove and a nearby fire pit and the grass blowing in the wind outside of a window and the scuttling of a cricket across the plank board floor . the movie pause and here while it expand while it breathe even if for only 40 second . the scene be a much need respite from taylor hackford otherwise noisy film . by noisy i be not refer to the music and which be and of course and excellent . i be refer to the sound effect ( big boom . precede yet another flashback ) and the inane dialog ( i be speak to you a a friend and ray and etc . ) . on the visual side and hackford be equally and pointlessly flashy represent sepia color filter over the camera lenses during the flashback while whirl dervish 360s from the camera crane and etc . etc . all the modern amenity . what a horrible cinematic style be display in ray . a style all too common in wan na be important movie from the past decade or so ( scorsese aviator be stylistically very similar to this movie ) . these gimmick be employ to obfuscate the cliché ridden screenplay . some of u would not be fool . some of u also be not quite prepared to accept jamie foxx performance a anything more than superb mimicry . grant and foxx eerily resemble ray charles represent he walk like charles and talk like charles and and even twitch like charles . foxx imitation of the singer during live performance be technically perfect . i be not begrudge mr. foxx his oscar while he deserve it . ( it be a pretty weak field this year and anyway . ) but one wonder if foxx really understands charles . the actor do achieve one great moment when he insist on try out the smack that his band mate be shoot up represent he register and if only for a brief moment and a disgust at the unfairness of be blind and a life of darkness . the movie seem to want to dramatize the struggle within charles between the bright salvation of music and the oblivion of heroin and with his blindness a the battleground between those two compulsion . but the damn movie just would not take the time represent it bounce along from triumph to triumph and never really pause for any insight into the man . one have to stretch to find the dramatic tension while one must supply the drama for the movie . one must and in other word and imagine a good movie than this one . in it rush toward a glorious conclusion and ray introduces and then dodge and several excellent idea for a movie represent his early day on the chitlin circuit while his bold musical innovation for the atlantic label while the problem of his addiction to heroin while the inevitable artistic compromise attendant upon overwhelm success while the man importance to the civil right struggle ( touch on in the movie for and oh and about 3 minute of screen time ) and and much more . the filmmaker be too lazy to focus on any one of these element . two and a half hour of watch a man overcome one adversity after another may make u feel good and but such a movie be not necessarily a grand work of art . this sort of approach certainly provide no deep insight into the film subject and shouldn not insight be the real goal of a movie like this . if i have want a laundry list of ray charles accomplishment and i would have simply google him . 3 star out of 10 the extra 2 star strictly for the music .