Starring Don Cheadle. Rated 14A

Of all the music bios sprung on us lately, Don Cheadle’s study of late-period Miles Davis comes closest to capturing the POV of a major artist, even if it’s one in decline.

Although he little resembles the lithe trumpet man, a fashion and music trendsetter well beyond the jazz world, Cheadle—who also directed and cowrote—masters his hero’s wary demeanour and distinctive rasp. Davis’s profanity-laden whisper came from a sidewalk screaming match that’s unseen here, although the time-jumping tale does show him getting beaten bloody by NYPD’s finest some years later.

Much of Miles Ahead is set in 1979, when the restless innovator, in his decadent, coke-sniffing phase, seemed played out. Ewan McGregor’s hustling Scottish journalist is a fictional version of the more prosaically Jewish writer Eric Nisenson, befriended by Miles at the latter’s low point. The more outlandishly presented events here are eventually revealed to be merely the journalist’s interpretation, letting our filmmakers off the factual hook.

The soundtrack is faultlessly comprehensive, and Cheadle stages some stellar re-creations, most notably in a large-group studio recording led by a convincing Gil Evans (Jeffrey Grover).

The novice director obviously prefers tangible external conflicts to the creative kind. So we get drive-by shootings, various fistfights, Phil Spector–level gun-wielding, and an emphasis on Davis’s violently controlling relationship with dancer Frances Taylor (Emayatzy Corinealdi). Cicely Tyson actually helped the trumpet genius clean up and start playing again, but she doesn’t show up. (Taylor is one of the film’s executive producers.) More crucially absent is any explanation of how the chip on Miles’s shoulder got so heavy. American racism is evident, but the film could have nodded to its subject’s unusually wealthy upbringing, which left him forever trying to prove how “street” he was.

Still, Cheadle’s well-shot and sharply edited vision is rich with jazz lore and majestic music. It does, as Miles would say, “come at it with some attitude”.