History brought to life
Regina King’s one night in miami imagines the fateful meeting of four important men
One Night in Miami Cast: Kingsley Ben-adir, Eli Goree, Aldis Hodge Director: Regina King Duration: 1 h 54 m Available: Amazon Prime
Regina King makes an assured feature directing debut with One Night in Miami, an engrossing adaptation of the 2013 Kemp Powers stage play.
In that well-received drama, Powers wrote about what might have happened on Feb. 25, 1964, when a cocky young boxer named Cassius Clay beat Sonny Liston for the world heavyweight championship. Later that night, Clay, Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X, pop singer Sam Cooke and NFL star Jim Brown gathered in a hotel room to celebrate. No one knows for sure what they talked about, but Powers concocted a riveting piece of historically grounded speculation, in which the four men debate Clay’s decision to become a Muslim, the political advantages of assimilation versus revolution, the responsibilities of Black men to their communities and why vanilla ice cream is no match for a flask full of whiskey.
The vanilla ice cream is one of the few facts known about the evening that inspired the story — the gathering’s host, Malcolm X, whose religion forbade anything stronger, offered it as refreshment. As the night plays out, tensions rise as the four — all, we should remember, in their 20s and 30s — joke and argue, tease and provoke. Although Brown and Cooke are skeptical of Malcolm’s sway over Clay, emotions truly come to a boil when Malcolm confronts Cooke over his music, making an unflattering comparison to Bob dylan, the white man who had written the era’s most stirring anthem of dissent.
Powers’s script can’t help but suffer from expository starchiness, having to educate present-day viewers about what may feel like ancient history. That makes it all the more crucial to find actors who can deliver the lines with unforced ease, and King has found just the right ensemble. Kingsley Ben-adir plays Malcolm X with a convincing combination of reflection, fury and growing anxiety; Leslie Odom Jr. effortlessly sinks into Cooke’s charismatic persona, while he soars into the singer’s distinctively honeyed tenor; Aldis Hodge inhabits Brown with imposing, watchful confidence; and Eli Goree brings just the right amount of humour and poetic cadence to his exuberant portrayal of Clay.
As a filmed version of a play, One Night in Miami has the same talky, slightly claustrophobic contours one might expect. But King has some scenes to open it up. And she gives each protagonist a prologue, telegraphing where each man is in his personal and political evolution.
Brown’s is the most potent, following him as he visits his Georgia hometown and pays a call to an elderly friend (Beau Bridges). King takes her time with the scene, allowing it to play out with the relaxed rhythms of a sunny afternoon on the front porch, before delivering a finale that lands like a punch to the gut. It’s a masterful piece of cinema — a self-contained film within a film — and it signals that King’s directorial career is off to an exceptionally promising start. ★★★½