Driving by his deep will of making a strong comeback, a smart jazz legend, who falls for a beautiful actress and struggles against restoring his lost glory besides dealing with love issues.
The film draws you deeply into Baker's fantasy world, to the point that the entreaty of his famous recording, "Let's Get Lost," almost seems like a good idea.
For casual fans or people who have yet to encounter Baker, Born To Be Blue is a good place to start, perfectly encapsulating the fragility and self-destructive urges that underlined his uniquely beautiful and melancholic music.
Born to Be Blue doesn't pretend to have all the answers. What it does have - in addition to an immersive performance from Ethan Hawke as the cool-cat jazz man - is an emotional understanding of who Baker was, or may have been.
Born to be Blue is perhaps a too-clever fictionalised take on the life of the jazz trumpeter Chet Baker, although Ethan Hawke's performance as the musician is as compelling as it is painful.
After the movie, don't be surprised if you find yourself downloading or streaming his music. If you do you will be struck by the haunting similarities of his sound and those from this very evocative and inventive film.
When Hawke's Baker finally slips out of the whiney loser persona and performs "My Funny Valentine," the scene evokes Baker's elusive melancholy and wistful torment, making the earlier fumblings worth the struggle.
Ejogo makes vivid work of that dread device, the composite character. Hawke, film-star handsome but unable to match the ruined angel looks of his alter-ego, still manages to summon up his lost-boy charisma.
Lord know we don't need another biopic of a troubled but brilliant musician, but writer/director Robert Budreau dives into the psychology of a figure like Baker with a depth that such films rarely muster.
