One Night in Miami w/Q&A

by Le Anne Lindsay, Editor

ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI is officially my choice for Best Film of 2020! [click to see my Letterboxd list of 121 films ranked Best to Worst] Kudos to first time director Regina King. We’ve all seen her career trajectory from a sullen teen on 227 to Boyz in the Hood, Jerry Maguire, Ray, American Crime, If Beale Street Could Talk and all the rest in and between, but it was seeing her earlier this year carrying the stellar HBO limited series Watchmen, that I truly took note of her considerable talents. And now this – the first black woman director to premiere a film at the Venice Film Festival. The lady is on fire. Can’t wait to see what comes next.

Playwright /Screenwriter Kemp Powers (Co-writer of Disney/Pixar Soul) wrote One Night in Miami as a play, which was staged in Los Angeles in 2013 to good reviews, but not widely known. And neither is the subject matter, even for someone like me who leans hard into pop culture, had no idea Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay) (Eli Goree) Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir) Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) and Football legend Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) were buddies!

Here you have four men of iconic status, all hanging out together on a historic night (February 25, 1964) the night Clay took the title from Sonny Liston; and yet this is not common knowledge? I hate to say it, but say Joe Namath, Rocky Marciano, Bob Dillon and Henry Kissinger all hung out one night, there wouldn’t be a person alive or dead that wouldn’t know everything about it. It would have been studied and dissected. But four famous black men’s association fell through the cracks, until now…

Most of the movie takes place in Malcolm X’s very modest motel room, with a disapproving Nation of Islam bodyguard (Lance Reddick) hovering menacingly outside the door. Brown and Cooke think they are all just meeting up in the room before hitting Miami hard to celebrate Clay’s big win. But Malcolm’s got other ideas, he wants a quiet, sober night of serious discussion on “The Movement” (Civil Rights) and announcing to the others Clay’s decision to convert to the Muslim faith. He does offer one concession of “fun” some vanilla ice cream.

The conversation starts congenial, but soon turns tense and complex, with Malcolm really going in on Cooke’s cross over easy tunes and need to please white audiences. Brown is going through career changing decisions and Clay is not 100% on board with his conversion.

Although there are scenes that take place in other locations, King smartly resists the temptation to remove all the staged structure to make it more cinematic. Instead, she keenly keeps the focus on the dialogue and the charisma and chemistry of these fine four actors. Along with the nod of knowing these conversations could easily be taking place in the present.

T&T @largeassmovieblogs rating: 5 outta 5

Members of The Philadelphia Film Critics Association were invited to a Live Virtual Q& A with the cast: Eli Goree, Leslie Odom Jr. Aldis Hodge, Kingsley Ben-Adir and Kemp Powers. Too bad director Regina King couldn’t be there as well. Still, it was great hearing what these actors felt about playing these iconic men and how Powers came to writing this fictional account of true events.