These musical biopics are beginning to overlap with each other. Here’s Miles Davis again, just a couple of weeks after turning up as a character in the Chet Baker story, “Born to Be Blue.”
Is somebody setting up a Marvel Comics-style universe here? Will there be a Musical Avengers squad, with Davis and Baker joined by Ray Charles and Hank Williams (Tom Hiddleston will have to do double duty as Hank and Loki) and the crew from “Straight Outta Compton”?
Maybe not. But the genre appears inexhaustible, for understandable reasons. It’s an excuse to put great music on the screen, and it invariably affords a juicy acting role for a lead performer.
In the case of “Miles Ahead,” Don Cheadle didn’t settle for playing Miles Davis. He also directed, co-wrote, and produced the picture.
The movie takes a liberally fictionalized look at some episodes from the life of the great jazzman in the late 1970s. A few true occurrences are mixed up with invented ones to give a snapshot of Davis at a rocky point in his career.
We intrude on Davis as he is being badgered by a freelance journalist (Ewan McGregor) at the musician’s Manhattan apartment. Davis has a cocaine habit, a creative block, and in the course of the day he misplaces the tapes of his new album.
Flashbacks give us a sense of Davis’s love life and its serious issues, as his marriage to Frances (Emayatzy Corinealdi, from “The Invitation”) stands in for his problems with women in general.
Cheadle, as director, tries to get something different going. The movie is inspired by jazz, so it has the freedom to shift tempos, moods, and time frames.
Fair enough. What it fails to do is get very deep into Davis’s music, or what the sources of that inspiration might have been.
And because Davis himself adopted an enigmatic, stand-offish personal style, Cheadle the actor has a tough job. He and McGregor look cool — they’ve really absorbed the 1970s — but we might find ourselves wondering why we’re watching these two strangers running around New York City.
There’s the music, of course. Nothing touches that. But despite the personal nature of this project (Cheadle developed it for years), the notes just don’t come together.
“Miles Ahead” 2 stars
Miles Davis in the late 1970s, embodied by Don Cheadle (who also directed) in a jazzy but jumbled moment from the great jazzman’s life. Most of it is fiction (Ewan McGregor plays a reporter chasing Davis for a story), but the story doesn’t illuminate what was unique about Davis’s music.
Rating: R, for language, nudity, subject matter
Showing: Alderwood mall, Meridian, Sundance Cinemas
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