Miles Ahead *** (2015, Don Cheadle, Ewan McGregor, Emayatzy Corinealdi, Michael Stuhlbarg) – Movie Review

Co-writer/director/star Don Cheadle’s labour of love biopic is a free-wheeling, impressionistic exploration of the life and music of legendary jazz trumpeter Miles Davis (May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991).

This is Cheadle’s director début and he takes risks to make it as ambitious and adventurous as he can. The result is that he succeeds in making it completely involving and constantly interesting without being able to turn it into a great, or even special movie. It recalls the recent I Saw the Light (2015), the Hank Williams biopic, though perhaps it’s not quite as good.

It homes in on the older, troubled, reclusive Davis in 1979, as he punches out the (fictional) Rolling Stone journalist (Ewan McGregor) who arrives at his home to interview him, eager for a scoop. McGregor’s co-starring status reveals that the journalist, Dave Brill, eventually finds a way to inveigle himself into Davis’s life, as he helps him to get drugs and to deal with an A&R man over royalties and a missing music tape. we really seem to be in another movie as Davis gets out his gun, fires it at the man, and escapes with the tape in a bizarre high-speed car chase action sequence that is apparently meant as an homage to Seventies blaxploitation movies.

Cheadle’s acting coach is credited. I guess he did a pretty fine job as his acting seems brilliantly good, though quite why the 51-year-old Oscar-nominated star [Hotel Rwanda (2004)] would need one I don’t know. Perhaps so that Cheadle could get his impersonation of Miles Davis spot on, maybe. Certainly Cheadle really looks the part.

Davis, of course, comes over as the usual regulation troubled genius, otherwise there would be no movie. This gives an unconventional film a real conventional centre that Cheadle can’t overcome. Of course, the music is something else. As with the Hank Williams film, if this is your kind of music and the musician is your kind of guy, you’ll be mesmerised.

The relationship between Miles and Dave turns into a weird, twisted bromance, as it turns out they both need a bit of male bonding healing, with Dave having broken up with his ex-wife and Miles still haunted by his similarly broken relationship with his wife, Frances Taylor (Emayatzy Corinealdi), who gives up her dancing career for him but finds he doesn’t reciprocate with his time. Cue multiple flashbacks to the much younger Miles, which Cheadle also manages to pull off, apparently without effort (though still with the acting coach, presumably).

Miles doesn’t treat Dave very well, but then he doesn’t treat anyone very well, and doesn’t come over as a very nice person. Instead he is being portrayed as conflicted and capricious, not to mention violent, inappropriate and foul-mouthed. This has the effect of making you feel less warm to the movie. It’s alienating!

What is attractive is that Cheadle turns in a fine-looking film with a great period look and lots of jazz cred. Miles tells us we’re to call it ‘social music’, though neither he or the music seem very social!

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© Derek Winnert 2016 Movie Review
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Miles Davis.