In 1964, black icons Cassius Clay, Malcolm X, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown met in a motel room in Florida one night. This real historical anecdote inspired a 2013 Kemp Powers play, “One Night in Miami”, and now actress Regina King makes her directorial debut with an electrifying and safe film adaptation.
It is a joint production of the first order, its four protagonists take prominent moments at various points while the characters reflect on the state of the civil rights movement, the power and meaning of their own celebrity and what the future holds for them and For the country.
The occasion? Cassius Clay (Eli Goree) – who will soon change his name to Muhammad Ali – is in Miami to fight Sonny Liston for the title of World Heavyweight Champion, a fight that the charismatic 22-year-old Clay is widely expected to lose. His friend Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir) is there for moral and, it seems, religious support: Clay is planning to convert to Islam. Soul singer Sam Cooke (former “Hamilton” student Leslie Odom Jr.) is in town after a disastrous concert at the Copacabana club in Manhattan, where an almost all-white crowd welcomed him in an openly hostile manner. Cleveland Browns runner Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) is also there for the sensational fight – though not before making a social visit, on the way, to a family friend (Beau Bridges) who ends his friendly conversation on the porch with a devastatingly casual piece of racism.
Running time: 114 min. R classification (language). Streaming on Amazon Prime.
It is in the power of that last exchange, at the beginning of the film, that you begin to feel King’s deep feeling for this project, the way she is adapting and expanding the piece while preserving the strength of her dialogue, which stealthily drops emotional bombs all over. As an artist, we know that she is capable of similar feats of dramatic brilliance, and it is exciting to watch her transition from this mastery to the other side of the camera.
After Clay wins the fight, friends get together for what Clay and Cooke, who like to party, think it will be a night of celebration. But Malcolm X has other ideas. Malcolm X de Ben-Adir is full of humanity and melancholy alongside a seriousness so unshakable that the other three can’t help but provoke him about it. The minister and activist wants to use and unify their respective positions as black cultural superstars to benefit their own civil rights movement. But, unbeknownst to the group, he and his wife are simultaneously planning to leave the Nation of Islam, and a shaken Malcolm is looking over his shoulder for men who may be following him.
King’s guidance is excellent in giving body to these men in addition to their most well-known qualities (although these also exist, especially in Goree’s charming and mischievous selfishness in his interpretation of Clay). It gives each actor his moment to shine – or, in Odom’s case, a handful of them, including a flashback of an impressive cappella interpretation of his song “Chain Gang” at a concert in Boston. He is charged and enigmatic, irritated by Malcolm X’s suggestion that he is a sold out. Hodge’s Brown maintains his discreet but intense arrogance, occasionally exploding with an outraged and hilarious “I’m the son of a bitch Jim Brown!” But it is Ben-Adir who presents this film. His portrait of Malcolm X, in the year before the man’s murder, is filled with sincere emotion and a cold, stone-faced resolution to end the persecution of black citizens in the country.
At this moment, King’s debut in the direction arrives like thunder.
