Miles Ahead is miles away from ordinary

I honestly am still not sure if this is a 100 percent true story or if this is a fictional story based on real people and real events. Either way, we open on Miles Davis doing an interview to promote his first album in five years (I can confirm that really happened). Ewan McGregor plays Rolling Stone (real magazine) writer Dave Brill (not a real person), who is set on landing an interview with Davis and thus making him a valuable commodity to any magazine.

After a night of drugs, booze and boxing, Miles gets robbed. A demo reel of new tracks he is working on for Columbia Records (real label) is stolen. Miles enlists Dave’s help to track it down. There’s blackmail, double crosses and gun fights. Really, Miles Ahead feels more like a caper film than a biopic.

That story is tied in with flashbacks to Davis’ first marriage with dancer, Francis Taylor (played by Hand of God’s Emayatazy Corinealdi). The two were very much in love and Davis was very awful to her. Miles Ahead isn’t an apology for Davis’ spousal abuse and it never tries to show him as a changed man, but it makes it very clear that Davis is beginning to understand that being a genius with a trumpet in his hands doesn’t excuse being monster in other facets of life.

All of the performances are good even if none of them blow you away. Cheadle presents Miles Davis as effortlessly cool and intimidating. He’s less Jamie Foxx’s interpretation of Ray Charles and more Richard Roundtree as John Shaft. It’s an impressive feat, considering Cheadle also directed the movie.

If you’re headed to the movies this weekend and have already seen The Jungle Book, there is genuinely nothing worth even considering spending money on other than Miles Ahead. It’s not a perfect movie, but it is very entertaining and highly rewatchable, and that isn’t something you can say for a lot of music biopics.