It’s good enough; but given the legend that is the subject matter, and the paucity of films in which his story is central, I’d argue that it needed to be better than "good enough" – if not great...

| Sep 15, 2022

If you're looking for a conventional bio-film, you'll be disappointed. If you want to get inside the head of the ingenious, erratic, enigmatic high priest of jazz, fasten your seat belt and enjoy the ride.

| Mar 7, 2017

Cheadle -- directing his first feature -- creates a film whose nerve its hero would surely admire.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 27, 2016

For jazz aficionados and Miles Davis enthusiasts, Miles Ahead is about as essential a piece of a filmmaking as any they're likely to watch anytime soon.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 11, 2016

[Such] pat psychologizing of a notoriously complex personality undercuts the swirling chaos of the 80s narrative.

| Jul 8, 2016

An imaginative and absorbing piece of filmmaking.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 10, 2016

Cheadle privileges the music in a way that shows his love and admiration for its creator. He has tried to make a movie that Davis would have liked, something with attitude and intelligence. On that level, Miles Ahead is a beautiful thing.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 9, 2016

Actor Don Cheadle, the star, director and co-writer of this ambitious biopic, doesn't want to play nicely. He wants to play.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 24, 2016

Like Davis's music, the film's structure is modal, with Cheadle getting the legend's changing stance spot on, as we slip on a cymbal splash between his incarnations as the sharp-suited epitome of cool and the coke-addled "Howard Hughes of jazz".

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 24, 2016

The film is alive with some lovely moments that point towards half-grasped possibilities.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 22, 2016

Davis's behaviour is monstrous but Cheadle plays him with such charisma that he seems perversely sympathetic anyway. We root for him.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 22, 2016

Writer-director-star Don Cheadle gives a towering performance that the film simply can't keep up with; he's truly on his own, which is perhaps the way Davis would have wanted it.

| Original Score: C+ | Apr 22, 2016

Miles Ahead riffs on the life of Miles Davis, improvising around the facts available, but somehow still reveals the essence and spirit of the man and his music.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 21, 2016

A jazzy and unconventional tribute to an American icon, "Miles Ahead" is quite a ride.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 21, 2016

Ultimately, Cheadle's labor of love prizes the music-making over the music, and maybe even over the man.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 21, 2016

This is a tumultuous and messy film that leaves you craving all the Miles Davis it doesn't give you, and I wouldn't have wanted it to be any other way.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 21, 2016

This could be Don Cheadle's finest hour.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 21, 2016

A movie that's often as sharp as you'd hope, yet whose weirdly off-key centre stands out like an uncharacteristic cracked note in an otherwise controlled, expressive solo.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 21, 2016

The problem with "Miles Ahead" isn't the playful, broad license it takes with Davis' story, but that it's so silly.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 21, 2016

The story has too many moving parts, and Cheadle can't keep them all in play gracefully-but his portrayal of this fantasy Miles seems to strike an almost cosmic connection with the spirit of a man we could never really know.

| Apr 18, 2016