Miles Ahead – Film Review by Frank L.

Director: Don Cheadle
Writers: Steven Baigelman (screenplay), Don Cheadle (screenplay)
Stars: Don Cheadle, Emayatzy Corinealdi, Ewan McGregor

Don Cheadle not only directed this biopic of Miles Davis, he also plays Davis and co-wrote the script. Davis lived from 1926 to 1991. The time span that Cheadle chooses to utilise begins with Davis contemplating (maybe too strong a word) a comeback. In that connection Dave Brill (Ewan McGregor) a journalist from Rolling Stone, seeks to obtain an interview from him. On ringing the bell Davis punches him in the face. An unconventional way to operate but Brill was as it turned out not being entirely straight with Davis. An unlikely friendship develops between them fuelled by drugs and sex. The story flashes backwards and forwards so the meeting with his first wife Frances (Emayatzy Corinealdi) plays a prominent role in Cheadle’s story even though Davis was in fact on his third wife when he was re-establishing his career. The shifting time sequence makes for a disjointed film.

The reason to have a movie about Miles Davis is because he was a great musician. He did have a messy life. The depiction of his life may assist in understanding some of the forces that drove Davis. In this snippet of that messy life Cheadle is fixated about a tape of music which Davis had recorded which Davis considered critical to his come back. The physical possession of the tape is the driving obsession of the story. Self help is the means used by Davis to recover it and that leads to a great deal of fast moving confrontations with an unsavoury cast of characters.

At the end of the movie one is little the wiser as to what made Davis tick other than he was at odds with social norms and very volatile. His fame and magnitude as a musician appears dwarfed by his personality flaws.