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  • Writer's pictureRoman Arbisi

Review: One Night in Miami...

A vehicle suited for Regina King to get familiar with the director’s chair in an insightful reflection of iconic black men.

One Night in Miami… is directed by longtime TV and movie actress, Regina King, and starring Kingsley Ben-Adir, Eli Goree, Aldis Hodge, and Leslie Odom Jr. as historical icons Malcolm X (Kingsley), Cassius Clay (Eli), Jim Brown (Aldis), and Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.). They spend a night in Miami after Cassius Clay’s victory over Sonny Liston articulating and debating their uncertainty of the future as historical icons that could pave the way for their communities. Most of this is instigated by the typically controversial, yet equally as insightful Malcolm X. What follows is a story entirely fictitious, but surprisingly meaningful.

 

It’s important to start with Regina King’s direction, because this is where One Night in Miami… needed the most work. It’s based on a play, and sometimes it falls into similar trappings that Denzel Washington’s Fences did. A very theatrical, but obviously written for the stage script. The same happens here, and there are a handful of times where it feels a bit too much like a play, instead of a movie. It’s almost like you can visualize Aldis Hodge remembering he needs to exit stage right for the story to continue the way it does. In that regard, King doesn’t do much to mask that. With it being her debut, you can’t anticipate a seamless, dialogue driven masterpiece, but she does just enough to give it some proper identity. There’s a notable sequence towards the beginning of the third act where Malcolm X is recounting a Sam Cooke gig in Boston. It’s sharply edited and confident in how it’s being conveyed. That’s an early, sure sign that she understands what it is film-makers are setting out to do. When you take all of this into account, the direction is just okay. There’s nothing visually dazzling, or stylistically surprising that will make you wonder if Regina King is the next great director, but as a project to dip her toes into, she does a fine job, and that’s all you can really ask for.

If we want to go one step further and say that one of a director’s most important jobs on set is to get the best performance out of the actors, then she exceeds in doing so. It’s clear that Leslie Odom Jr. is the weakest link of the cast. The dramatic chops and emotional depth just isn’t there by comparison to the other guys. His singing voice is truly magical though, and if Hamilton made you a fan of his voice, then you’ll be treated to a special moment here. The biggest standout was Eli Goree as Cassius Clay. Clay obviously grows into becoming Muhammad Ali after he joins the nation of Islam, but Goree brings a wonderful, youthful exuberance to Cassius. There’s a charm, an excitability, in Goree’s performance for a man whose life is just beginning, that is stark in comparison to Kingsley’s X who is aware that his time is running out. Which is really where so much of this film’s strengths come from.


For every cast member who is playing a historical icon, there is a strength within each of them that is nonexistent in another, or there is something they haven’t uncovered yet, that someone else will for them. It creates this language between the men that is insightful, playful, and challenging. There is a consistency that lives within how Malcolm X views the world and their duty as black men, and how each of those men derive their own meaning from that. When you look at Jim Brown’s physicality compared to Cassius you might not notice a real difference on the outside. They’re both successful athletes who are currently the best in their respective sport. When in actuality, what lives within these men as they recognize their duty as athletes in a white man’s world, is relatable, honest, and challenging to them on their own journeys. The dialogue is so clever in how it relates each man to one another on physical, mental, religious, philosophical levels. It’s a script that adores it’s subjects and how they paved the way for black Americans during that time, and the many after.

One Night in Miami… never resolves conflict with absolutes or “right” answers, it instead uses these men to offer up varying degrees of perspective that allow each of them to apply some of that to the road ahead. Unfortunately for Malcolm X, there isn’t much road left to travel, but his mark left on these men and how his very existence inspired them leaves an unsubtle impact. Malcolm X has always been controversial, but he is the linchpin to this entire operation, and his fiery and aggressive tactics will force audience members to grapple with the truth as well. Not that every word Malcolm X spoke was true, but the lies that were masked as truths throughout history in regards to a black person’s role in America at various levels. Artistically, vocally, physically, mentally, religiously, politically. So much of that is presented and left on the table for these men to feel conflicted over. It’s the type of storytelling that is very confident in understanding how to utilize historic figures to allow the audience to derive their own exclusive meaning from that conflict.


For myself; I left this film pondering how I’ve grown from being a complicit, naive white boy, into an active, fiery white man driven by my eagerness to listen to perspectives and how they clash with what I was told to believe growing up. This is one of those movies that I’d typically brush aside because it was an event that never happened, but the film welcomes audience participation. It allows us to grapple with the context of the film and how we can apply that to modern text, what we’re living through now, how we can reflect on some of history’s greatest icons and learn a little bit about ourselves and the people around us, from them.

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