Born to Be Blue Trailer

Trailer for Born to Be Blue, starring Ethan Hawke.

Ethan Hawke lights up the screen as jazz legend Chet Baker, whose tumultuous life is thrillingly reimagined with wit, verve, and style to burn. In the 1950s, Baker was one of the most famous trumpeters in the world, renowned as both a pioneer of the West Coast jazz scene and an icon of cool. By the 1960s, he was all but washed up, his career and personal life in shambles due to years of heroin addiction. In his innovative anti-biopic, director Robert Budreau zeroes in on Baker’s life at a key moment in the 1960s, just as the musician attempts to stage a hard-fought comeback, spurred in part by a passionate romance with a new flame (Carmen Ejogo). Creatively blending fact with fiction and driven by Hawke’s virtuoso performance, Born to Be Blue unfolds with all the stylistic brio and improvisatory genius of great jazz.

Director Robert Budreau has a bit of an obsession with Chet Baker, as Born to Be Blue is not his first film covering the individual. Budreau also directed a short film called The Deaths of Chet Baker.

Born to Be Blue finished production in 2015 and was immediately submitted to the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. The film was a hit with critics and quickly picked up by IFC Films for a 2016 theatrical release. However, even with the positive praise from the festival, the theatrical release will be a limited one.

Ethan Hawke has a history of taking his project choices pretty seriously, so I was interested about his depiction of Chet Baker long before seeing the trailer for the film. Born to Be Blue does look like an accurate depiction of the jazz singer while covering his trials and tribulations. And, being that the film is covering a troubled musician, expect drug addiction as well; it sounds cliche I know.

Focusing on realism rather than some upbeat take on Chet Baker's story, Born to Be Blue is not exactly the escape moviegoers are looking for but should, as IFC Films expects, find an audience among the limited engagement crowd. In that regard, the trailer is a perfectly accurate depiction of what to expect from the film's 97 minutes running time.

Typically not the type of film I race to theaters for, but will happily check it out on VOD.