The trailer for Don Cheadle's hotly anticipated film that focuses on jazz innovator Miles Davis's "lost years" in the latter half of the '70s, Miles Ahead, has been released. In it, our hero holds a gun as often as he does a trumpet and punches a journalist (played by Ewan McGregor), seemingly on principle (I can hear y'all cheering from here). From this evidence, the movie looks like a biopic in which some liberties will be taken... imagine that. Whatever the case, as a Miles fan (especially of the electric period, much to Mr. Mudede's chagrin), I'm excited to see if Cheadle will nail more than just Davis's hushed husk of a speaking voice. In a 2014 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Cheadle said, "[T]he construction of the movie is the parallel story of Miles in 1979 at the end of this quiet period he was in, the five-year stretch of time when he wasn’t playing and performing and recording, juxtaposed against the 10-year period where he was with Francis Taylor Davis, who, at the time, was the love of his life and his muse." That's an idiosyncratic approach to an important musician's life, and Cheadle should be credited for not taking the easy, straightforward path with this project. Check out the trailer after the jump.

Miles Ahead opens April 1.