Skipping around in time, it depicts Davis' attempts to get his career back on track following a period of inactivity and drug addiction in the 1970s, fictional adventures with a journalist (played by McGregor) who wants to profile him, and his troubled marriage to a former dancer (Corinealdi).

[3] The film's score covers, in non-linear fashion, Davis' actual recordings throughout his career, beginning with Agharta (1975) before jumping back and forth in scenes featuring Kind of Blue (1959), Someday My Prince Will Come (1961), Bitches Brew (1970), and We Want Miles (1981), among others.

Adapted from Sony Classics[5] In the midst of a prolific career, Miles Davis (Don Cheadle) disappears from public view for a period of five years in the late 1970s.

He lives in isolation while dealing with chronic pain from a deteriorating hip, a musical voice inhibited and numbed by drugs and painkillers, and traumatic memories of his past.

A Scottish music reporter, Dave Braden (Ewan McGregor), forces his way into Davis' house and, over the next couple of days, the two men unwittingly embark on an adventure to recover a stolen tape recording of the musician's most recent compositions.

Davis' mercurial behavior is fueled by memories of his failed nine-year marriage (1959–1968)[6] to the talented and beautiful dancer Frances Taylor (Emayatzy Corinealdi).

This transitioned into other periods of his music career, including recordings from Porgy and Bess and Kind of Blue in 1959, Nefertiti and Filles de Kilimanjaro in 1968, Bitches Brew and the Jack Johnson sessions from 1969 to 70, the 1974 Dark Magus performance, and We Want Miles (1981).

[13][14] In August 2015, Sony Pictures Classics acquired distribution rights outside the United Kingdom, Ireland, South Korea, the Middle East, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Portugal, Switzerland, former Yugoslavia and Israel to Miles Ahead.

[19] In The New York Times, Manohla Dargis wrote that while Davis purists may complain about the imagined sequences in the film, "they'll...miss the pleasure and point of this playfully impressionistic movie."

[20] Chicago Sun-Times critic Richard Roeper gave Miles Ahead three out of four stars and found most of it silly but often engrossing, crediting Cheadle for attempting to make a unique music biopic while giving "a brilliant performance worthy of an Oscar nomination".

[21] In a less enthusiastic review, Kenneth Turan from the Los Angeles Times stated the only "fully realized" characters played by Cheadle and Corinealdi were surrounded by a plot he deemed clichéd, unsophisticated, and forgettable.