"One Night in Miami..." comes alive with crackling script and four towering performances

One Night in Miami… (2020)

First-time feature director Regina King and screenwriter Kemp Powers (2020's "Soul") pull off quite a feat with King’s assured directorial debut, “One Night in Miami…,” an adaptation of Powers’ own stage play that fictionalizes one memorable night shared by four cultural icons. King has amassed four actors, all perfectly cast for their magnetism, charisma, and ability to humanize Black men who could have been simply lionized. The film might not lose its play roots, centering on a lot of conversations, but it never feels staid, instead breathing and coming alive. “One Night in Miami...” isn’t squarely an actor’s piece, but an alternately entertaining and quietly powerful fly-on-the-wall experience.

On February 25, 1964 when 22-year-old boxer Cassius Clay (Eli Goree) beat out Sonny Liston for the World Heavyweight Championship, he has a small celebration with three friends in a Miami motel. Before he would call himself Muhammad Ali, Cassius promises firebrand minister Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir) to convert to Islam and embrace his faith to the world. NFL star and aspiring movie star Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) and silky-smooth singer Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) are also there. Over the course of this one night, there are two white men outside the motel possibly spying on a paranoid Malcolm, but tensions rise inside the room among these four men with their own egos and beliefs. 

For all of “One Night in Miami…,” Regina King has a skillful way with space—besides the motel room, the action extends to a rooftop, a club, and a parking lot—and finds an immediacy within a simple yet thematically loaded story. It’s a film about conversation as much as it is about digging into big ideas that are even relevant today. Kemp Powers’ words are particularly snappy and thoughtful, as when these friends spar and debate on their responsibilities to the Black community. Malcolm wants Sam to use his voice to do good, like when he recalls seeing Sam about to perform in Boston and improvising with an a cappella version after his mic goes out. 

Having some daunting shoes to fill after Denzel Washington’s portrayal in Spike Lee's "Malcolm X," Kingsley Ben-Adir makes his own layered, indelible mark as Malcolm X, and the same goes with Eli Goree as Cassius Clay even after Will Smith’s performance in 2001’s “Ali.” Aldis Hodge has charisma to burn and brings a vulnerability to Jim Brown, and Leslie Odom Jr. just keeps impressing as a stage-turned-film actor who puts his vocal talents to beautiful, soulful use as Sam Cooke. Unless one picks Jim Brown’s brain, no one can know the conversations by verbatim that these four important figures had in February 1964. In case of Regina King’s “One Night in Miami…,” Kemp Powers’ compelling, crackling screenplay and the four towering, persuasive performances will do just fine.

Grade: B +

Amazon Studios released “One Night in Miami…”  (114 min.) in theaters on December 25, 2020 before a streaming release on Prime Video on January 15, 2021.