‘One Night in Miami’: Relevant Depiction of Black American Legends Fails to Transcend Its Stage Origins [Review]

Originally published on 09.11.20 at the Toronto International Film Festival

Actress-turned-director Regina King has adapted Kemp Powers’ play “One Night in Miami” for the screen with mixed results. The big sell here is the “what if” scenario the film tries to lure us with.

What if .. on February 25th, 1964, after 22-year-old Cassius Clay defeated Sonny Liston in Florida to become the world heavyweight boxing champion, a post-celebration with Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown, all close friends at the time, would have happened. So it goes, all of them were actually there in Miami that night. This plausible scenario is glamorized to full-effect by King in her debut film.

Eli Goree plays Cassius Clay, on the eve of announcing his conversion to Islam. Kingsley Ben-Adir (a performance lacking in energy) is Malcolm X, hounded by FBI agents tailing him. Leslie Odom plays Sam Cooke, and Aldis Hodge is NFL great, Jim Brown, ready to make the jump from the gridiron to the big screen. The thick of the movie has our four men indoors after Ali’s win. Cooke and Brown are ready to party, but Malcolm wants a more contemplative evening, opting to replace booze with the vanilla ice cream that’s in the freezer.

King’s movie is drunk on the power of words and it’s both a blessing and a curse that the serious set of discussions about African-American civil rights illuminate, but don’t necessarily feel free-flowing enough or as well-thought-out as they should be. You can see and feel the stage origins of “One Night in Miami” in almost every frame, King never truly transcends those said origins. The costume design is as slick and precise as the camerawork, photographed by DP Tami Reiker’s crisp colors, ditto the too-precisely drawn-out dialogue which, although indelibly passionate, lacks the subtle nature, flow, and feel of organic debate.

Of course, the topics being discussed here are as relevant as ever. Malcolm criticizes his friends for not using their star leverage to bring politics to the forefront of their image— the best bit has Malcolm and Cooke arguing about the worth of song and if Cooke should move away from romantic ballads and head towards the political activism of Bob Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind” because, after all, if a white man from Minnesota could so ably describe the plight of the black American, then why can’t Cooke? History has shown that Cooke would be influenced by Dylan’s protest song to write his own iconic civil rights anthem “A Change is Gonna Come,” but in “One Night in Miami,” King adds in the fictional detail that it was Malcolm who led him down that path by playing the Dylan record in the hotel room and influencing the next stretch of his musical career.

Although well-intentioned, I was never enthralled by “One Night in Miami,” the first hour is a real slug to get through and once the thick of the action begins, the hour-long hotel room conversation, it has its moments, but never truly lands with a punch. The result could have been much more enthralling. Instead, it plays ultra-safe, and as a slick, not to mention caricature-filled, TV movie. [C+]