Regina King has conquered every facet of the business she’s tackled. Whether it’s winning Oscars (for If Beale Street Could Talk) or Emmys (she has four, including one recently for Watchmen), this is one accomplished artist. With the astonishing true story, One Night in Miami, she adds narrative directing to her resume and does so in the most enlightening, entertaining, and timely ways.
Did you know that singer Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.), Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), boxing legend Muhammed Ali (Eli Goree)—then known as Cassius Clay—and Hall of Fame footballer Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) were all friends in 1964 and gathered at a Miami hotel to celebrate the ascension of one of their own to the moniker of Heavyweight Champion of the World?
Kemp Powers penned a stage play about it that shares the film’s title, and now it falls to King’s gifted hands to bring it to life on film.
These Fab Four discuss racial inequities, the budding Civil Rights movement, and basically talk about things that four good pals would converse about. In the process, the audience is given a fictionalized window into a world that really existed. Feeling like a fly on the wall while these guys who couldn’t be more in the public eye, relax and are truly themselves with their close friends is completely captivating.
These four individuals may have shared much, but each is uniquely defined in Powers’ play, and thus also with his screenplay adaptation. Creating four distinct characters, who are public personas if there ever were any—much less four—had to be the first of many challenges for the writer. Brown, Clay, Malcolm X, and Cooke may have walked in different arenas in that public eye, but their collective experience as black men in America in 1964 join in them in ways that transcend everything else.
Witnessing them simply spend time together is a gift to us all. It is a pure lesson in political awareness, equal rights, and other lofty ideals that should be grounded in reality.
But at its heart, One Night in Miami is a celebration of male friendship and everything that means. There’s something about the camaraderie between a group of men who have shared years of experience together that is utterly priceless. Time may pass, time may separate, but something that tethers male friends is something that King captured with her camera in the most astounding and mesmerizing of ways. We could have spent an entire month in Miami with these four lads.
One Night in Miami is a stark reminder of how far we’ve come, but given the headlines of this year, it is also a kick in the stomach that we still have so far to go.
It’s supremely different to quantify the performances of the four leads. Each does their part to precision.
Odom’s Cooke is ever the entertainer who drops that persona when he’s with his friends, yet when the time calls for it—it is right at the surface. In the hands of Odom, he is approachable, insanely talented and he is someone who doesn’t kid himself about his success and its racial divide.
Meanwhile, there is Goree’s Clay, who is just on the cusp of his greatness—and he knows it. No one has ever accused the future Mohammad Ali of being timid in celebrating his strengths, looks, well, his everything! As Goree plays him, he is an integral part of this friendship square. He knows they’ve gathered to celebrate him and his victory and rise to the top of his profession. Yet, the time they spend together is never about him per se. It is about brotherhood and bonding and that is just one reason why One Night in Miami is masterful.
Ben-Adir is Malcolm X. He is fresh from playing Barack Obama in the outstanding Showtime miniseries The Comey Rule, and in Miami tackles another black icon in a manner that not only befits his stature in history but humanizes him in such a way that brings him to the masses in the most approachable of ways. He is firmly the conscious of this group and his budding political and societal aspirations are seen at a crossroads. There are hangers-on, there are believers, and there is a militant aspect of his movement that is at a crossroads as this Night in Miami plays out.
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Brown (Hodge) himself is at a decision point. He’s making bank as a running back running circles around the competition in the NFL. Yet, the call of Hollywood is strong and it’s bringing more money and is unquestionably safer to the soul and of course, the body than football. He’s thinking long term, for his health, for his family, for his future.
When Brown gets together with his pals, that Tinsel Town aspect is played down at first. He’s almost embarrassed to bring it up. It’s an adorable reveal of character that endears us to Brown from the get-go. We know the truth. He would go on to a solid career in Hollywood and still land in the NFL Hall of Fame. But at this extraordinary moment in time, Jim Brown is weighing all the possibilities and he needs the input of his friends on this fateful night, something he will get and then some.
Although also a stage play brought to the screen, One Night in Miami has a completely different staged feel than Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Both capture the African American experience at different times of American history before major progress truly began.
Directors King, versus Wolfe with Ma Rainey’s, takes a different approach here with her film. It is much more cinematic and less theatrical, and you know what… the material requires it here, whereas it didn’t necessarily with the Chadwick Boseman-Viola Davis starring stunner.
King makes the most exceptional narrative debut with One Night in Miami. She made her directorial debut with the 2014 documentary Story of a Village.
Her command of the filmmaking aspect of making a movie is innate. What she illustrates with this film is something it takes some directors decades to learn and that is patience. Sometimes the story has to marinate on a scene and let the audience soak in the emotive stew that the ensemble has created for its maximum effect. She does that throughout this film and as such, it is one that will stick to you in ways that are simply divine.
Grade: A