While there is an untruth at the heart of the film, it's in service of illuminating any number of smaller truths, and I find that approach fascinating.

Erratic, unpredictable and constantly intriguing, Miles Ahead plays more like one of Davis' compositions than a traditional biopic, stumbling around with flashes of insight and a brilliant central performance.

The abstraction of the approach perhaps limits the scope of Miles Ahead as an acting showcase, though in Cheadle's fully inhabited characterization, he nails the subject's soft, nicotine-scratched rasp and his eccentric irritability and paranoia with discerning understatement.

First-time feature director Don Cheadle has made an invigoratingly bold attempt to structure his film about Miles Davis as an extended visual and narrative equivalent of modal jazz.

This is probably Cheadle’s most electrified performance since the one that made him a star, as the incorrigibly homicidal Mouse in "Devil in a Blue Dress."