MILES AHEAD (2016) Three-and-a-half stars
Jazz trumpeter, composer, and band leader Miles Davis (1926-91) made some of the best albums of all-time: KIND OF BLUE, SKETCHES OF SPAIN, and IN A SILENT WAY among them.

He’s listed for 51 studio albums, 36 live albums, 35 compilation albums, 17 box sets, four soundtrack albums, 57 singles, and three remix albums in a solo career that lasted over 40 years.

MILES AHEAD (also the title of a 1957 album) works as a meditation on Davis’ public image and Samuel L. Jackson’s favorite word.

Actor, director, and writer Don Cheadle, who stars as Davis, has not fashioned a traditional screen biography and I am very thankful for that. I mean, I gave that genre up for good after the double whammy of RAY (2004) and WALK THE LINE (2005) nearly 15 years ago. I don’t think an old-fashioned screen biography could possibly contain Davis, anyway, just like it failed with Johnny Cash; Kris Kristofferson captured Cash better than a two-hour motion picture with these lyrics, “He’s a poet, he’s a picker / He’s a prophet, he’s a pusher / He’s a pilgrim and a preacher, and a problem when he’s stoned / He’s a walkin’ contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction.”

A Rolling Stone article titled “The Two Sides of Miles Davis” begins, “There was never one Miles Davis. Depending on whom you ask, there may have been as many as five. But those would be the jazz fans, those who charted his every artistic move. They’re right. The composer/trumpeter blew through styles with a restless energy unlike any other 20th century musician. But for our purposes, let’s step back from Davis’ stylistic devices and creations and look at the two fundamental Miles Davises: the public and the private.”

The article goes on to discuss Davis’ 1989 autobiography.

It definitely seems that Cheadle and gang read “Miles Davis: An Autobiography,” with detailed notes from Davis’ vocabulary.

Here’s a few samples:

“Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent.”

“I remember one time — it might have been a couple times — at the Fillmore East in 1970, I was opening for this sorry-ass cat named Steve Miller. Steve Miller didn’t have his shit going for him, so I’m pissed because I got to open for this non-playing motherfucker just because he had one or two sorry-ass records out. So I would come late and he would have to go on first and then we got there we smoked the motherfucking place, everybody dug it.”

“We were all up in that shit like a muthafucka. It’s cleaner than a broke dick dog.”

“You can tell whether a person plays or not by the way he carries the instrument, whether it means something to him or not. Then the way they talk and act. If they act too hip, you know they can’t play shit.”

Davis would probably tell me to go eat a dead dog’s dick for using the word “jazz” to categorize his music at the start of this review. He rants about that early on during MILES AHEAD.

“I don’t like that word ‘jazz.’ Don’t … don’t call it ‘jazz,’ man. That’s some made-up word. Trying to box somebody in. Don’t call my music ‘jazz.’ It’s social music.”

There’s no effort to soften or sugarcoat or make Davis more palatable for the masses in MILES AHEAD, unlike both RAY and WALK THE LINE.

That’s probably why Cheadle, unlike Jamie Foxx in RAY and Joaquin Phoenix in WALK THE LINE, did not get showered during awards season.

We do hear Davis’ music throughout MILES AHEAD — notably “So What” from KIND OF BLUE, “Solea” from SKETCHES OF SPAIN, “Seven Steps to Heaven” from SEVEN STEPS TO HEAVEN, “Frelon Brun (Brown Hornet)” from FILLES DE KILIMANJARO, and “Black Satin” from ON THE CORNER.

Just incredible music.

You wouldn’t have been able to tell that to Davis. Bless him.

Enjoy this excerpt from Nick Kent’s “Lightening Up with the Prince of Darkness”:

“It’s (music’s) never been better!” Davis said. “Damn right! Are there drawbacks? None whatsoever! Hell, some damn critic’ — the word is spat out — ‘might disagree, but, you see, he don’t know! All this shit about me bein’ better in the old days … music bein’ better. That’s reactionary thinking from motherfuckers who weren’t even there. The old days … shit!”

That’s something that Davis could have easily said during MILES AHEAD.

Cheadle’s film bounces back between Davis’ hiatus period and his relationship and subsequent decade-long marriage (1958-68) with his first wife Frances Taylor (1929-2018).

Several articles have called MILES AHEAD’s factual accuracy into question.

More importantly, though, MILES AHEAD captures the spirit of Miles Davis accurately.