“It can never be said that Don Cheadle hasn’t given everything he has” to this Miles Davis biopic, said Dominick Suzanne- Mayer in ConsequenceOfSound .net. Set in the late ’70s, Miles Ahead focuses on the jazz trumpeter’s darkest period, when he quit music for five years while nursing his grievances and a fierce cocaine habit. Cheadle, who co-wrote and directed the film, “does some of his best work to date,” creating a wrenching portrait of the drug-addled genius that openly acknowledges just how cruel Davis could be to people he loved. Unfortunately, a fictional central narrative “overwhelms the true story,” said Matt Patches in Esquire. Davis teams with a Rolling Stone journalist, played by Ewan McGregor, to stop Columbia Records from releasing a stolen session tape, and that buddy-comedy mission generates “an enjoyable, vapid ride” that’s also a distraction. Davis’ genius is apparent only in flashback scenes that “drift in on a wave of blue notes and cigarette smoke,” said David Edelstein in New York magazine. We see the young Davis bend bandmates like Gil Evans and Herbie Hancock to his will while giving them room to find their inner pulse. “It captures what you hear on many of Miles’ records—the sound of great artists alone together.”