MILES AHEAD (Don Cheadle). 100 minutes. Opens Friday (April 15). See Listing. Rating: NN
Miles Davis became a legend for a reason. Not only was he a uniquely gifted jazz trumpet player, but he was larger than life in temperament and presence catnip to an actor like Don Cheadle, whos been trying to make a movie about Davis for the past decade.
Rather than tackle the man in full, Miles Ahead which Cheadle also co-wrote, co-produced and directed offers a slice of the legends life. It focuses on a few days in 1979, when the musician was a coke-addled recluse in New York City, hung up on memories of his first wife, Frances Taylor (Middle Of Nowheres Emayatzy Corinealdi).
Cheadle channels the whip-smart, mercurial Davis effectively, but the movie around him is a stylized, self-indulgent mess. Ewan McGregors unscrupulous reporter has to vocalize the scripts questions about life and inspiration. (This is what happens when your protagonist doesnt like to talk to people.)
But the device feels clumsy and didactic, and building the climax around a chase for the tapes of a recording session that could signal Daviss comeback pushes the movie from character study to weird farce.
To quote the man himself, so what?
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