One Night in Miami… (2020)
dir. Regina King
Rated: R
image: ©2020 Amazon Studios
“Power just means a world where we’re safe to be ourselves.”
That’s a quote in the film One Night in Miami… from the character Muhammad Ali – more accurately, Cassius Clay, as the story takes place on the eve of the legendary boxer converting to Islam and changing his name. What power means to the Black community, and the best way to obtain it, is the preoccupation of both the film and the four iconic real-life figures at its center. The movie is all about power, both in the Black community and among these four characters, who would all shape the world in their own ways. It’s a gripping character study that addresses the ongoing struggle of the Black movement to secure that basic sense of safety that Ali is talking about.
Primarily taking place over the course of the night of February 25, 1964, Miami is a fictionalized account of a celebration in the wake of Cassius Clay defeating Sonny Liston to become the world heavyweight boxing champion. Political activist Malcom X, NFL great Jim Brown, and soul singer Sam Cooke gather with Clay to commemorate his victory. Although the events depicted in the movie – adapted by Kemp Powers from his own 2013 stage play – are fictitious, the men were friends in real life. During this imagined gathering, the men both confront and comfort each other about their places in the fight for Black liberation.
This is the feature film directorial debut from Regina King. The veteran actress, who appeared in the cult-classic Friday, as well as turning in brilliant performances in the HBO series The Leftovers and Watchmen, made her own bit of history with Miami. She is the first Black woman to have a film selected to premiere at the Venice Film Festival.
King has multiple television episode directing credits under her belt, and her work here is assured and stylish. At times it has an exciting, improvisational style to it. Cinematographer Tami Reiker gives the picture a sumptuous glow; it’s a beautiful film to look at.
As the men gather at Malcom X’s hotel room – Sam Cooke, the most financially successful and affluent of the friends, arrives first and remarks to himself what a dump the place is – the civil rights activist and firebrand’s planned festivities are lacking, as far as the others are concerned. As a devout Muslim, X won’t allow alcohol; his biggest contribution to the party is vanilla ice cream. Cooke is more interested in going out on the town. The brash and flamboyant Clay, who has made the decision to convert to Islam, so will also soon be abstaining from alcohol, imagined a livelier celebration, as well.
X has some harsh words for his friend Sam. The singer isn’t using his platform as an entertainer to advance the cause of racial equality. He sings crowd-pleasing songs, and the crowds he’s most interested in pleasing, according to X, are white.
What makes Miami so interesting and complex are the ways in which the movie examines, through the characters, the myriad strategies available for advancing the cause. Cooke doesn’t hesitate to fire back at X. His version of power comes through financial success and independence.
In one scene, Cooke shares a story about taking power, but behind the scenes. He tells of a song written by one of his protégés, Bobby Womack. The song was a hit on the R&B charts, but only barely cracked Billboard’s Hot 100 List. A new British group, The Rolling Stones, approached Cooke for the rights to cover the song. It became a smash hit on the Rock & Roll charts, which at first made Cooke and Womack frustrated.
Then the royalty checks started rolling in.
The ultimate sign of power for Cooke is getting white people to pay him, without them even knowing it. Every time a white girl in the suburbs buys that record, he says, both he and Womack get cash in their pockets. He ends the story of his version of Black success in America by telling his friends that Womack is now anxious for the Stones to record more of his tunes.
Clay is chasing his own version of success and power by being undeniably the best in his profession. He uses his oratorical flair and larger-than-life personality to make sure everyone – especially white people – know that he’s the best.
Football star Jim Brown does the same on the field, although his demeanor is more unassuming than his fellow athlete. He sees a path to success beyond the bruising game he plays, where those with the real power are the ones sitting in the luxury boxes giving either the thumbs up or the thumbs down. He confides to Clay about shooting his first movie, a western. It’s a hell of a lot easier on his knees, and the pay, $37,000 for a few weeks work, gives him his own form of freedom.
For Malcom X, speaking truth to power and “riling up the white folks,” as one of his compatriots describes it, is the only path to liberation. The other men might call X out for sounding too much in private like his televised speeches, but none of them can deny his passion for the cause.
In what were most likely new scenes written for the film adaptation – I can’t say for sure, since I haven’t seen the stage version – we see the struggles each character faces in his own quest for success. These introductory scenes are a little clumsy, exposition speeches by other means, but they also give us a sense of why these men feel as strongly as they do about being successful.
One in particular is shocking, if not surprising. We see Jim Brown return to his hometown in Georgia to visit some friends of the family who are white. The patriarch greets Brown on the front porch and effuses praise for the success Jim has had as a Cleveland Brown. (Jim Brown currently holds 11th place in NFL all-time rushing yards, fifty years after his career ended.)
The man reminds Jim how their families have looked after one another for decades. In the middle of their friendly talk, as they enjoy a glass of lemonade in rocking chairs on the front porch, the man’s granddaughter reminds her grandfather that he needs to move a piece of furniture for her. Jim offers to help with the chore. The man smiles, but says no. “You know we don’t allow n****rs in the house, Jim.”
The look on actor Aldis Hodge’s face as Jim Brown in this moment is heartbreaking.
The performances in One Night in Miami… are all sublime. Hodge is quiet, almost stoic, as Brown. British actor Kingsley Ben-Adir – who is similarly magnetic in the second season of the Netflix series The OA – is pitch perfect as Malcom X. Since X was such a vivid, outsized figure in the Black liberation movement, it would have been easy for the performance to slip into caricature, but Ben-Adir is far too talented of an actor to let that happen.
Eli Goree matches Will Smith’s iconic performance in Ali as The Greatest. Goree expertly matches Ali’s unique cadence and uncontainable persona. The golden-voiced Leslie Odom, Jr. similarly shines as Sam Cooke. Any opportunity to hear Odom sing is rewarding, and we get it several times throughout Miami. There is a great coda to the movie in which we see Cooke perform a new song on The Tonight Show. It’s one of the singer’s biggest hits, “A Change Is Gonna Come.”
It’s a song that directly confronts the oppression that Malcom X accuses Cooke of avoiding in his quest for money and fame. The short sequence is a powerful end to a similarly powerful movie filled with extraordinary performances and masterful direction from Regina King. One Night in Miami… is one of the best films of 2020, one that shouldn’t be missed.
Why it got 4 stars:
- A few opening minutes of clunky exposition and the stage-bound quality of the source material aside, One Night in Miami… is one of the best of last year. It tackles how complicated the fight for Black liberation is through the lens of four real-life figures who fought for it in their own ways. Regina King’s direction is assured and strong; sign me up for whatever she decides to do next.
Things I forgot to mention in my review, because, well, I'm the Forgetful Film Critic:
- The veteran actor playing the Brown family friend who uses the deplorable slur is Beau Bridges. He knocks his three or so minutes in the movie out of the park.
- Aside from the issues of Black liberation, Miami is also a probing character study of how these four men see themselves and how they see themselves helping the Black community.
- At the end of the movie, I was left with the feeling that I wanted to know more about all of these guys. I know where I need to start. You might have noticed in the main review that I compared Eli Goree’s performance to Will Smith’s in Ali but I made no mention of Denzel Washington’s portrayal of Malcom X. I must hang my head in shame because I’ve never seen Spike Lee’s magnum opus. I’m making a promise to you and to the movie gods that I’ll rectify this soon.
Close encounters with people in movie theaters:
- What’s a movie theater? I saw this on an awards consideration screener disc.