Born to Be Blue

In 1954, jazz trumpeter Chet Baker (Ethan Hawke) made a dazzling vocal debut on Manhattan's Birdland stage with Miles Davis (Kedar Brown) and Dizzy Gillespie (Kevin Hanchard). This was after Baker had worked with bebop pioneer Charlie Parker and baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan, establishing his soulful West Coast sound. What followed was a succession of barren years, blighted by Baker's rampant heroin addiction. The mid-to-late 1960s found Baker in Hollywood, immersed in a movie based on his life, and falling in love with the actress (Carmen Ejogo) who would play his wife. And that is the episode of Baker's life that writer-director Robert Budreau has fictionalized in Born to Be Blue (in reality, Baker declined an offer from Dino De Laurentis to play himself in a bio-pic that was subsequently never made). Mostly eschewing linear continuity, Budreau also serves up a contrived segment in which two drug dealers brutally beat up Baker in 1966, knocking out his front teeth and destroying his lips, forcing him to re-learn how to play his instrument with dentures. After that humiliation, Baker is seen scraping the bottom of the musical barrel, playing trumpet as part of a mariachi band. Watching a drug addict shoot up repetitiously eventually grows tedious. Also, since Budreau could not obtain the rights to use the original music, Hawke does his own singing, while trumpeter Kevin Turcotte re-creates Baker's notes (Hawke's subtle rendition of Baker's sad signature song My Funny Valentine is actually the film's highlight). Ending this sordid tale before Baker's death (falling from an Amsterdam hotel window in 1988), this uneven bio-pic is an optional purchase. [Note: DVD extras include a behind-the-scenes featurette (8 min.), deleted scenes (5 min.), and a trailer. Bottom line: a small extras package for a so-so film.] (S. Granger)