One Night In Miami: Four Black '60s Legends Bare Souls In Regina King's Stagey, Passionate Directorial Debut
By Thom Ernst
Rating: B+
Regina King's directorial debut restages-on-film Kemp Powers' theatrical production One Night in Miami. Powers’ play imagines what happened when four iconic men — American football hero Jim Brown, crooner Sam Cooke, Malcolm X, and the legendary Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay) — convene at the Hampton Hotel at the height of the civil rights movement.
Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.), Ali (Eli Goree), Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir) and Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge)
The year is 1964. Having earned the title of World Heavyweight Boxing Champion following an unexpected win over Sonny Liston, Clay (Eli Goree) is abuzz with energy, jumping on beds and declaring his greatness. Brown (Aldis Hodge) and Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) are ready to tear up the town. Meanwhile, Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), the outspoken voice of the Nation of Islam, remains sober and reserved, attempting to appease his friends with offers of vanilla ice-cream.
But beneath the veneer of young men sharing a good time, darker things brew. Brown, after a disheartening confrontation with a family acquaintance, is reconsidering playing football. Cooke nurtures a wounded pride after enduring an all-time performance low. Clay ponders a life-altering decision to convert to Islam, and Malcolm X weighs the toll his fight for justice has on his family.
In a few weeks, two of those men will be murdered. The event is real. The story is fiction.
It's a sumptuous hook to hang a story, but there is a lot of history to unpack. The underlying truth of the film is not served by hard-fisted attention to reality. Accuracy plays its part in recreating Miami of the ‘60s. There is authenticity in the clothes and the styles reflected in the living rooms on television screens. But the bigger truth is in Malcolm X's determination to see the Civil Rights movement through—and I'm quoting him out of context—"by any means necessary."
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The story doesn't rely on a word-for-word transcript. No such transcript exists. What Powers taps into - presumably reflecting historic sentiments of the time and a well-documented understanding of the characters involved - is a deep-rooted appreciation of what it must have meant to be Black, young, and famous in ‘60s America.
That King, a woman, should take on a male-dominated story as her first project should be incidental. After all, directors who aren't women have been helming female-driven stories for years, often with a lesser connection to the source material than King has with One Night in Miami. And it would be foolhardy to assume that a masculine take is the only reliable one on topics such as football, boxing, womanizing, and the arguably male act of insurgence. Foolhardy and wrong.
But there is more to consider in One Night in Miami that gives King's perspective as a woman additional weight. Themes of tyranny gone unchecked and the corrosive influence of systematic oppression dominate the film's dialogue and underscore many of the scenes. But underlying the ideology of a movement towards justice is the language of a male-dominate world.
King clearly admires the men in the story; Malcolm X is afforded a near mystic reverence, while Ali's blowhard proclamations have a childlike innocence. Brown shows dignified restraint in the face of deplorable bigotry, and Cooke, though somewhat blinded by fame and success, still strives to give back to his community.
But subtle, almost inconsequential moments of insurrection are noticeable in scenes where Muslim women are distinguished from their male counterparts by their white robes, sitting quietly beneath a patriarch of men in sharp suits and bow ties. We see it again in the understated strength of Malcolm X's wife (Joaquina Kalukango), and in the contradictory musings of Sam Cooke's wife, Barbara Cooke (Nicolette Robinson).
On stage, the heightened dialogue and passionate performances have the power to come off with the skill of marksmen shooting multiple bullseyes in rapid succession. On film, that same dialogue with similar performances can be distracting, and the dramatic flair once captivating on stage is overwhelming and false on camera.
And yet, One Night in Miami is a powerful imagining of one of the most intriguing private gatherings in contemporary history. And though we are merely a fly-on-the-wall, eavesdropping on a conversation that is likely far more electrifying than the actual discussion, it's still a remarkable experience.
One Night in Miami Directed by Regina King. Starring Kingsley Ben-Adir, Eli Goree and Leslie Odom Jr. Available to stream beginning January 15 AmazonPrime.