Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

It was like a blues music, and the title explains the whole movie. The protagonist, Chat Baker is a person who cannot live without heroin and trumpet. These two things does not let him to get any other kind of happiness. Ethan Hawke's acting was good enough to make Chat Baker's miserable life look romantic. He suffered between his desires, walked a path of agony, but while he walked through the path, he looked beautiful, and he seemed the person who was born to walk that path. Also, I loved the ending. I cannot think of any possible alternative ending, because it is like an ending note of a song, and any other note cannot complete it.

I was going to say initially that Ethan Hawke was miscast, but since this is a work of fiction it does not matter. It is a story of a trumpeter addicted to heroin, who together with his lady friend struggles to establish a career. But Chet Baker has nothing to do with it. Kevin Turcotte played all his solos, and I particularly liked the piano of David Braid, who I had seen in Toronto. There is no mention or reference to Chet's association with Gerry Mulligan the baritone sax player and their pianoless quartet which became world famous. The trumpeter in this story was beaten by a drug dealer and his cronies, so badly that his teeth were purposely knocked out and of course we all know this is what regrettably happened to the real Chet. I heard Chet Baker on Music for Moderns on the radio in the 60s in England and I was fascinated by him and his sound. Happily I can say I have much of the important music he created in my CD collection. And today computer to stereo 20 ft away via Apple Airport Express wirelessly.... Russ Freeman on piano, with Chet playing "Bea's Flat"simply blew my mind. I mean the original 1953 recording version with Larry Bunker on drums (not the Boston 1954 later version). Listen to that and you will hear amazing melodic and inventive trumpet at medium tempo with piano bass and drums, and for any trumpeter reading this I challenge you to play it. I am a jazz fan, Chet was a jazz trumpet man I can never forget... from Malcolm Hopkinson in Toronto Aug 2016

Ethan Hawke as Chet Baker is giving us a characterization of Chet Baker not as the person but surely as what it felt like to be Chet Baker. It is Chet Baker trying to understand himself and how his music was a projection of himself to which he was always striving to make more perfect. No human can do this therefore the heroin was an escape from himself.Carmen Ejogo positively shines as the two women in his life. As his girlfriend Elaine she tries to bring some sense of balance and grounding into his mixed-up life and realizes late into their loveship she will always be second to his music and drugs.This story is fascinating and painful. And this is where the viewer may experience compassion burnout because Baker is forever making the same mistakes. He cannot see this but you the viewer will see it and by movies end you just do not care anymore. Everything about this movie is right but by the end you are just at the point of being bored!Still this is a film worth every minute of viewing time.

Born to Be BlueThe key to being a successful musician/drug addict is picking the most lucrative genre in which to perform.Unfortunately, the strung-out artist in this drama chose Jazz.Failing to pay his drug debts, jazz heartthrob Chet Baker (Ethan Hawke) has his front teeth kicked in in front of his new girlfriend (Carmen Ejogo). Unable to play his horn he must now answer to a parole officer who requires him to find a real job.While he agrees to undergo drug treatment, Chet refuses to give-up performing, even though his new affliction leaves him sounding like an amateur.While Hawke turns in a remarkable portrayal of the embattled Baker, the Baker he is depicting isn't the real Chet Baker, but a fictional account of the addict that uses his bumpy history and embellishes it with substantial poetic license. Besides, junkies make the worst fans because they never leave after the concert. Yellow Lightvidiotreviews.blogspot.ca