When I heard that a Miles Davis biopic was in the works, the first question I had was, "how many women is Miles Davis going to punch in the face in this movie?" The answer is: one, but only under duress.
Everybody knows Miles was a woman beater. In a time like the present when feminism is on everybody's mind, the time is certainly not right for a biopic about a man who treats women the way he did.
I expected the movie to either cop out and avoid mentioning it, or try to justify it somehow. It takes the latter tack. Miles hits his wife, Frances, in this movie, more out of self defence than anything else. She goes completely crazy throwing things at him, and he doesn't hit her. Then she hits him. It looks, for all the world, like she wants Miles to hit her.
So that's how they get away with that.
Aside from that, "Miles Ahead" is a pretty typical biopic. It shows a long few days in Miles' life during his shut-in period in the late '70s. He occasionally sees things that take him down memory lane, like old album covers: cue flashbacks. The flashbacks show his relationship with his first wife, Frances Davis. We don't see any of his fatherhood, and you certainly wouldn't know he had two more wives after that one.
These flashbacks are, ultimately, less interesting than the main narrative. They don't grab your attention all that much and there isn't much in the way of detail for the jazz fan - yes, Gil Evans makes a blink and you'll miss it appearance, but what about the band mates? They are credited as "piano player", "bass player", etc. This is jazz. One player is as important as any other. But they can't even credit them with names? If they played with Miles on his classic sessions, they were legends.
The main narrative often stretches credibility, but it is entertaining. It is here that Don Cheadle's portrayal of Miles really shines.
You find yourself wondering, repeatedly, if any of that stuff really happened, but at least Cheadle is having fun. This narrative even employs a McGuffin: a stolen tape that contains the first music Miles has recorded in five years. We take a journey with Miles to Columbia records, jazz clubs, the houses of drug dealers, and Miles' own house, as he tries to retrieve it.
The performance of Cheadle's in these scenes makes the movie worth watching, but it is too forgiving of Miles wife-beating in the flashbacks, and too hard to believe in its main narrative.
Everybody knows Miles was a woman beater. In a time like the present when feminism is on everybody's mind, the time is certainly not right for a biopic about a man who treats women the way he did.
I expected the movie to either cop out and avoid mentioning it, or try to justify it somehow. It takes the latter tack. Miles hits his wife, Frances, in this movie, more out of self defence than anything else. She goes completely crazy throwing things at him, and he doesn't hit her. Then she hits him. It looks, for all the world, like she wants Miles to hit her.
So that's how they get away with that.
Aside from that, "Miles Ahead" is a pretty typical biopic. It shows a long few days in Miles' life during his shut-in period in the late '70s. He occasionally sees things that take him down memory lane, like old album covers: cue flashbacks. The flashbacks show his relationship with his first wife, Frances Davis. We don't see any of his fatherhood, and you certainly wouldn't know he had two more wives after that one.
These flashbacks are, ultimately, less interesting than the main narrative. They don't grab your attention all that much and there isn't much in the way of detail for the jazz fan - yes, Gil Evans makes a blink and you'll miss it appearance, but what about the band mates? They are credited as "piano player", "bass player", etc. This is jazz. One player is as important as any other. But they can't even credit them with names? If they played with Miles on his classic sessions, they were legends.
The main narrative often stretches credibility, but it is entertaining. It is here that Don Cheadle's portrayal of Miles really shines.
You find yourself wondering, repeatedly, if any of that stuff really happened, but at least Cheadle is having fun. This narrative even employs a McGuffin: a stolen tape that contains the first music Miles has recorded in five years. We take a journey with Miles to Columbia records, jazz clubs, the houses of drug dealers, and Miles' own house, as he tries to retrieve it.
The performance of Cheadle's in these scenes makes the movie worth watching, but it is too forgiving of Miles wife-beating in the flashbacks, and too hard to believe in its main narrative.