One Night in Miami

Malcolm X and Martin Luther King famously met only once. The two most iconic leaders of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s had quite different views, with King calling for racial integration and Malcolm calling for racial separation. With previous efforts to unite and rally together having failed, the two met by chance in the halls of the Senate just for a few moments and cordially shook hands; they never met again. After Malcolm X's assassination, King wrote to Malcolm's widow, Betty, that while the two didn't always see eye to eye on methods to solve the race problem, he "always had deep affection for Malcolm."  

One Night in Miami is about a fictional conversation in 1964 between Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, and Sam Cook, four huge figures who in real life were actual friends. The four of them were nascent yet simultaneously at a low point. This is evident in each scene that introduces us to them: Muhammad Ali (then known as Cassius Clay, and played here by Eli Goree) nearly loses a boxing match in London (it at first appears that he lost; it's only later revealed that he actually won); Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) bombs his performance at the Copacabana in front of an all-white audience; Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir) is having increasing conflicts with the Nation of Islam; and Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) is, despite his incredible success in the NFL, called a racial slur (quite casually) to his face.

While this long chat in Miami is (as far as we know) fictional, it seems that writer Kemp Powers (who adapted the screenplay from his award-winning 2013 play) must have imagined at least once what it would have been like if Malcolm X and Martin Luther King had in fact met behind closed doors, away from the cameras, and exchanged more than just a polite handshake. Whether or not Powers had thought of this, Cooke is the one would be the most like King; both were born in the South, were Christian, and died young. Cooke was an active member of the Civil Rights Movement, but in this film, Malcolm X believes he ought to be doing much more than singing for cold white folks. 

Many of the most dramatic moments in One Night in Miami feature a sometimes heated argument between Malcolm and Cooke, with the former urging the latter to be more involved in the struggle for Black liberation. Most people don't like being lectured to, though, and Cooke fights back. Sometimes Clay and Brown need to break them up. Sometimes the arguing goes in different directions. The fundamental and consistent debate among them, though, is about what is best for their people during a time of terrible discrimination and violence.

Powers, the co-writer and co-director of last year's Soul and the writer of a few episodes of Star Trek: Discovery, was a reporter for seventeen years and used that experience to create distinct voices for characters. The playful yet tense dialogue he gives these four is theatrical, but not as much as Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, which might serve as a major competitor in awards season. One Night in Miami is the directorial debut of Regina King, who the past few years has picked up a variety of awards for her work in front of the camera in projects like If Beale Street Could Talk and Watchmen. For her debut, King has received rave reviews and is a contender for Best Director at the Academy Awards, which would make her the first Black woman to achieve that.

King sometimes lets some of the supporting bit players overdo it, but she gets quality work from her four leads, particularly Odom, who has dazzled audiences this year with his work here and in Hamilton. The best part of his acting in One Night in Miami is his singing; that is, unsurprisingly, his own voice singing some of Cook's famous songs. The others are commendable, as well. The British actor Ben-Adir commands attention in every scene, Goree has the haughty confidence of Clay down perfectly, and Hodge's well-played passivity serves as an appropriate balance to all the energy in the tight hotel room. The four succeed in pulling off possibly the most challenging aspect of such a project: portraying real-life figures without appearing like a cheap imitation. While the other supporting actors sometimes give distracting performances, others (like Beau Bridges) do not, and actors known primarily for their work on television shine here as well, with Lance Reddick as one of Malcolm's bodyguards and Michael Imperioli as Angelo Dundee being notable examples. 

While the ideas are fascinating to listen to and the actors do a terrific job communicating them, audiences will have to decide their eagerness for watching what essentially is a long conversation in which they will be a fly on the wall. A result is that it sometimes feels repetitious. One Night in Miami sometimes feels not like a four-way conversation between icons but instead a diatribe by one of them (Malcolm) against another (Cooke) for not doing enough to support the cause, while the two others (Clay and Brown) are trying to discover what personal path they will take. Of the four, it is Brown who likely is the audience surrogate, partly because he says the least. He calls the evening a "strange night" and asks out of exhaustion what is going on. Audiences might feel the same way he does.