Ethan Hawke turns in a solid, thoughtful lead performance in this workmanlike picture from the Canadian writer-director Robert Budreau. It is about the troubled jazz trumpeter Chet Baker, shown making a tempestuous career comeback in the 1960s.
Baker is grappling with his demons in the conventional music-biopic style: success, fame, drugs, sex, love and the fundamental battle to be understood as an artist. It is well enough performed by Hawke, who taps into a certain neediness, junky jitteriness and loneliness. Carmen Ejogo does well as his wife.
This is a watchable movie that pays Baker the compliment of taking him and his music seriously. But it’s a little linear and on-the-nose. The appearance here of Miles Davis (played by Kedar Brown) reminded me of Don Cheadle’s recent movie about Davis – Miles Ahead – which is superior because it takes a more unpredictable, leftfield approach, displaying less solemnity, more humour, more excitement. With this film, we are locked, a little dispiritingly, into a sombre narrative from the outset. Perhaps that’s inevitable with a Chet Baker life story. A serious, worthwhile film.
