The holiday season is an excellent time to catch up on good and interesting movies I missed the first time around. Here, I catch up on One Night in Miami…
When I reviewed The Trial of the Chicago 7 over a year ago, I lamented how an exciting premise—the debate among a group of radicals over how to pursue social change—was largely wasted by a muddled, scattershot screenplay. I must therefore report with satisfaction that I have found another historical drama from the same year, also penned by a playwright turned screenwriter, that covers a similar story of political and personality conflict but succeeds where the other movie failed. This successful movie is One Night in Miami… (2020).
Directed by Regina King and written by Kemp Powers, who adapted his stage play, One Night in Miami… is a fictionalized imagining of a real-life encounter that took place in February 1964. Cassius Clay (Eli Goree) has just defeated Sonny Liston in a boxing match and thereby become the new Heavyweight Champion of the World. Fresh from his victory, Clay meets in a motel room with his mentor and spiritual guide, Nation of Islam spokesman Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir). Malcolm is preparing Clay (soon to become Muhammad Ali) to publicly embrace Islam—and although Clay does not yet know it, Malcolm hopes to persuade the boxer to support him in his impending departure from the Nation of Islam.
Joining the two men at the motel are Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge), the star running back of the Cleveland Browns, and singer/songwriter/music producer Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.). Malcolm X wants to make the case to the three other men for using their celebrity to serve the cause of Black empowerment. The others have their own views of what empowerment means, though. Over the course of the night, the men argue, joke, and swap stories in an atmosphere full of both hostility and affection.
One Night in Miami… succeeds because of the intelligence of Powers’ screenplay and the strength of the performances. The screenplay keeps the story fairly tight and focused, with its limited number of characters and locations. Also, while not without its share of on-the-nose dialogue, the script is still remarkably nuanced in how it handles the differences and relationships among the four men.
Powers wisely avoids having the characters debate the obvious, perhaps more cliched, questions about Blacks’ struggles. We don’t get arguments about separatism vs. integration or violent resistance vs. nonviolent resistance. The question of respectability vs. militancy is addressed, but in a relatively oblique way. To the degree an ideological issue separates the men, it is the more subtle question of “Does empowerment require a Black man to be overtly political or is it enough simply for him to be successful?”
Malcolm X and Cooke are the two most vocal spokesmen for the opposite sides of this debate. Malcolm presses the others, especially Cooke, to speak out on behalf of the struggle and use their fame to benefit their fellow Blacks. Cooke retorts that by becoming wealthy and funneling money back into the community, he and other Black celebrities are doing precisely that. He also challenges Malcolm X on how much of substance the latter’s belligerent rhetoric really accomplishes. Meanwhile, Brown and Clay occupy an uneasy middle ground in this debate, sometimes trying to make peace within the group and sometimes mounting their own challenges to Malcolm X and Cooke.
Beyond philosophical differences, though, Powers’ writing zeroes in on the complicated interactions of the four men’s personalities and concerns. Malcolm plays the role of mentor to Clay, yet the younger man has his own concerns and ambitions and does not necessarily want to follow the religious and political path his guide has mapped out for him. Who the dominant figure in the relationship really is remains ambiguous: Malcolm clearly depends on Clay for his own ambitions. (An intriguing criticism raised by Cooke and sadly not pursued is the degree to which Malcolm cultivates Black celebrities so as to benefit from their reflected success.)
Meanwhile, behind his successful façade, Cooke is grappling with his own problems: insecurities about his musical career and a marriage strained by infidelity. Brown is exploring a move from sports into acting, in the hopes this will provide greater financial security and independence than life in the NFL. As a fellow athlete, he also provides his own understated guidance to Clay. And overarching all these colliding priorities and problems is Malcolm’s fear and desperation: about his looming departure from the Nation of Islam, about FBI surveillance, and about the growing threat to his life.
The movie also finds some welcome humor and texture amid the drama. Clay, Brown, and Cooke’s hopes for a fun victory party run aground on Malcolm X’s personal abstemiousness: as host, the biggest indulgence he can offer is some ice cream. I appreciated the nice little touch of Malcolm’s evident pleasure in his state-of-the-art camera and his unselfconscious boasting of the camera’s fine German manufacture. Late in the movie, Powers’ screenplay gives Brown a funny aside that lampshades the unavoidable contrivance of the movie’s scenario.
The actors playing the four principals are all excellent. Ben-Adir gives us a Malcolm X who is a forceful intellectual but also can be warm and vulnerable. As Clay, Goree evokes the boxer’s famous mannerisms and cockiness without descending into an impersonation. More important, he shows the real person—callow yet determined—underneath the public persona.
As Cooke, Odom captures all the contradictions of a famous performer: ego and petulance but also immense business shrewdness and supreme mastery over an audience. This last characteristic is captured in a flashback to a memorable Cooke performance that is probably the best of the movie’s scenes to take place outside the motel room.
Hodge, as Jim Brown, has in some ways the hardest role, as he is playing the least flamboyant character. He succeeds by showing how Brown’s relatively contained manner is rooted in a self-confidence that seemingly surpasses even that of the other three men.
Among the supporting cast, some other players stand out. The actors playing Malcolm X’s Nation of Islam bodyguards provide an entertaining study in contrasts. Christian Magby, as the young Brother Jamaal, keeps letting his discipline slip under the weight of his awe at being close to so many famous people. Lance Reddick, as the older Brother Kareem (who one gathers is there more to monitor Malcolm than to protect him), brings equally understated humor and menace to his role. Joaquina Kalukango, as Betty X, overcomes the tired trope of the Great Man’s Anxious Wife Back at Home through careful underplaying. Betty is concerned about her husband’s safety, but also shares his sense of mission and his pride in guiding Clay. By striking multiple notes, Kalukango keeps her character from becoming a stereotype.
Not everything in the movie works. If I had to find fault with Powers’ screenplay, it would be in the limited attention given to spirituality’s role in the story. Islam is clearly an important part of Malcolm X’s life and may be for Clay as well, although the boxer is ambivalent about his prospective conversion. Apart from an early scene of the two men praying together, however, the subject is not explored in much depth. The treatment of Muslim faith is generally kept to the superficial level of arguments over dietary and other restrictions.
Although cinematographer Tami Reiker, together with the art, set, and costume designers, succeed in giving the movie a glossy, early 1960s stylishness, many of the attempts to move One Night in Miami… away from its theatrical roots and make it more cinematic end up diminishing it. Some early scene-setting vignettes from each man’s life (a previous boxing match of Clay’s, a Copacabana performance by Cooke, etc.) are broadly written and acted in a way unworthy of the rest of the movie.
King’s direction includes some odd choices; why the repeated, unmotivated use of overhead shots? Still more damaging is the choice, during a tense scene between Malcolm X and Brown, to present their conversation in alternating close ups. An unbroken long shot of their talk, while less dynamic, would have shown us both Ben-Adir and Hodge’s full performances simultaneously and let the emotion build without being broken by cuts.
These are all just quibbles, though. The screenplay and performances are strong enough to carry over any missteps. Also, some scenes outside the motel room conversations work well. I already mentioned the flashback to Cooke’s performance as a stand out. At the movie’s conclusion, King also makes a good use of montage, set to Cooke’s seminal “A Change is Gonna Come.”
Above all, these final passages display the same complexity that makes the rest of the movie so strong. We get glimpses of the path each man followed after that night of conversation and confrontation: who ends up at odds with each other; who ends up in an alliance of sorts; and the characters’ ultimate fates all give One Night in Miami… a powerfully bittersweet ending.
The Cameraman 