ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI
OUT 26 DECEMBER CINEMAS 15 JANUARY AMAZON PRIME VIDEO
Impactful 1960s drama featuring more icons than an emoji keyboard.
Taking its lead from the Peter Morgan school of speculative bio-fiction, Kemp Powers’ play-turned-film imagines what was said on the night activist Malcolm X (played by Kingsley Ben-Adir), singer Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) and NFL star Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) met in a hotel room with Cassius Clay (Eli Goree) to celebrate the latter becoming heavyweight boxing champion of the world.
It’s a dazzling, once-in-a-lifetime gathering of Black icons – though neither Powers nor director Regina King (see feature, p78) are content just to bask in their reflected glory. Instead, they set them in thrilling opposition, with Malcolm’s insistence they use their celebrity for the greater good of their race acting as the touch-paper for passionate, provocative and sometimes incendiary debate.
Sam and Jim appear happy to prosper within a system they’ve managed to make work for them. But Malcolm wants to upturn the apple cart, having convinced Cassius to reveal his Muslim faith and join the Nation Of Islam – an organisation he himself has plans to quit after falling out with its figurehead. The shifting power dynamics that ensue require our full attention, as well as an acceptance the action will rarely venture outside Malcolm’s claustrophobic motel suite. What we get in return is a superlative actors’ showcase, with Odom Jr.’s Cooke ultimately emerging as the unforgettable stand-out.