Born in a poor town in Georgia, Ray started going blind from glaucoma at the age of five shortly after witnessing his younger brother's accidental death. Inspired by a fiercely independent mother who insisted he make his own way in the world, he found his calling and his gift behind a piano keyboard.

As he puts it in his autobiography: "I was born with music inside me. That's the only explanation I know of... Music was one of my parts... like my blood.

Touring across the Southern musical circuit, the soulful pianist and singer built up his reputation before exploding onto the worldwide scene when he pioneered the innovative and somewhat controversial mixture of gospel music with Rhythm & Blues.

It's during the overwhelming recreations of Ray's performances that Hackford and Jamie Foxx, eerily convincing in the title role, are at their exemplary best. They manage to capture every bit of the pure emotion and feeling poured into his every song.

Foxx proves himself as a skilled leading man and proved his worth with an Oscar win for his exhausting devotion to bringing Ray's sound and movement back to life.

Like any other story that incorporates the American Dream, Ray Charles' has the usual paradoxes - Rags to riches. Triumph overcoming tragedy. Light transcending darkness - but Hackford doesn't refrain from also dealing with his escalating heroin addiction and lust for extra-marital affairs.

The result is a real and truly absorbing reflection of Charles' genius and the life he overcame to find it.

Dominic Bloch