RAY Charles died last June, and if this movie tribute seems to have arrived with undue haste in the manner of the rush of John Peel hagiographies, cancel that thought.

Director Taylor Hackford collaborated with the blind Georgian soul innovator over 15 years on this noble venture, and although the movie is predictably over-long and occasionally clichd, it is an honest, warts-and-all account of the formative and peak years of a six-decade career. It is blessed too with an Oscar-tipped lead performance from Jamie Foxx that lifts Ray above its unimaginative structure.

What a story writer James L White has to tell, a story that starts in dirt-poor Thirties' Florida with five-year-old Ray standing transfixed while his little brother drowns in a bathtub. Within two years, the traumatised Ray has gone blind, and the wily survival instinct that serves him throughout his life is set in motion by his tough-love mother (Sharon Warren).

Hackford, White and cinematographer Pawel Edelman proceed to relate Ray's rebellious rise in immaculate period detail, while feeding that progress with flashbacks to his childhood, complemented by the less successful motif of an adult, guilty-feeling Ray being troubled by hallucinogenic images of water.

Foxx's Ray is of course in dark glasses, and the film makers favour that brand too rather than the rose-tinted variety, as they depict his infidelities on the road with his backing singers, his ruthless pursuit of the best contract deal and his self-destructive addiction to heroin.

These are given equal measure to his ground-breaking achievements as a lone blind black man playing piano in the blossoming Fifties' clubland, his invention of soul, his inspired transfer to country music on the Atlantic label and his support for the civil rights movement.

The film has to conclude somewhere and Hackford chooses 1966, when the singer weaned himself off heroin after a drugs bust, followed by a hasty coda which ties up a few loose ends with his family a little too conveniently.

Throughout, Hackford's directing tends to the hackneyed but he uses sound with brilliant clarity to convey Ray's reliance on his ears, while the songs (all original Charles recordings) crackle with electricity when given the chance, and in Foxx he has a remarkable lead.

The fantastic Mr Foxx has Ray Charles's distinctive gait and mannerisms and his sensuality, and the dark glasses are no barrier to his soul and thoughts. He is a Ray of light and dark.

Updated: 15:44 Thursday, January 20, 2005