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Ethan Hawke gives a haunting performance as jazzman Chet Baker in "Born to Be Blue," an impressionistic and somewhat fictionalized biography that showcases the trumpeter's talent and troubles.
Most of the movie centers on Baker's life in the mid-'60s, when his heroin addiction has overtaken his career ambitions. When thugs beat him up and knock his teeth in — destroying his embouchure, the way his mouth meets the mouthpiece — Baker must start over from the bottom, relearning how to play with a mouthful of dentures.
During his recovery, he vows to stay off heroin — to stay out of prison, to impress his onetime producer Dick Bock (Callum Keith Rennie), and to satisfy his girlfriend, Jane (Carmen Ejogo), an actress he met while filming his life's story. (Jane is a composite character, a clever conceit because Ejogo also plays Baker's ex-wife in the movie-within-a-movie "flashbacks" during his early successes.)
Writer-director Robert Budreau occasionally succumbs to the clichés of the music-biography genre, particularly in the rise-fall-rise trajectory of Baker's drug-addled life. But Hawke inhabits Baker beautifully, portraying his uncertain sobriety and channeling his pain in a stunning vocal of his signature tune, "My Funny Valentine."
'Born to Be Blue'
Opens Friday, April 15, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas; rated R for drug use, language, some sexuality and brief violence; 97 minutes.