Category: KIng, Regina

On February 25, 1964, Muhammad Ali, when he was still being called Cassius Clay, defeated Sonny Liston in Miami, Florida to win the heavyweight championship of the world. Malcolm X, one of the most prominent voices at the time in the U.S. Nation of Islam, was there that night for support, and had talked to Ali about converting to Islam as a religion. Jim Brown, one of the most famous football players of the time, was one of the announcers at the fight. And Sam Cooke, one of the greatest singers of the time (known as the “King of Soul”) was also in Miami that night. It’s from that point that the fine movie One Night in Miami, directed by Regina King and adapted by Kemp Powers from his stage play.

Before that night happens, King and Powers introduce the four; Clay (Eli Goree) fights Henry Cooper in London, Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) performs for an all-white audience at the Copacabana club in New York City and feels underappreciated, Brown (Aldis Hodge) visits Georgia and is welcomed by Mr. Carlton (Beau Bridges), a family friend, until Carlton uses a racial slur to let Brown know he’s not welcome inside his home, and Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir) comes home to his wife Betty (Joaquina Kalukango), where he gives hints about what he’s hoping to accomplish when he meets up with the other three. That night, Clay of course wins the fight against Liston, while Brown helps call the fight and Cooke and Malcolm watch appreciatively in the audience. After the fight, Malcolm invites the other three to a “party” in his motel room, except when they arrive, the only ones there are Malcolm and his bodyguards (one of whom is played by Lance Reddick)*, as Malcolm intends this less as a party than a call to arms (figuratively speaking).

At this time, Malcolm had helped facilitate Clay’s conversion to Islam (which would lead to Clay changing his name to Muhammad Ali), but Malcolm at that time was also in the process of breaking away from the Nation of Islam and starting his own group (partly because he’s found out Elijah Muhammad (Jerome A. Wilson) has fathered children from several different women, partly because Muhammad suspended Malcolm for the remarks Malcolm made after JFK’s assassination, and partly because Malcolm had modified his own views on how to achieve equality for African-Americans even as he continued to call out structural racism by whites). However, that’s something Malcolm reveals later in the night, as he hopes Brown, Clay, and Cooke will join him. Before that, Malcolm calls out Cooke because he claims Cooke is pandering to white audiences by avoiding doing any music that reflects the struggles African-Americans have in American society (by contrast, Malcolm plays Bob Dylan’s version of “Blowin’ in the Wind” and wonders why Cooke hasn’t written anything like that) – Cooke, in turn, points out with all the people he employs and the money he’s making for them, he’s doing as much, if not more, for African-Americans than Malcolm is preaching. Clay, meanwhile, is having second thoughts about converting to Islam, as he doesn’t know if he’s up to the strict discipline. Finally, Brown, who has recently turned to acting, is thinking about quitting football altogether.

It must be said, of course, in addition to the fact we don’t exactly know what happened when the four of them met that night, King and Powers have taken a couple of liberties with the story. For starters, there was no real conflict between Malcolm and Cooke in the way that’s depicted in the movie – Powers took that conflict from his time working on Star Trek: Discovery as the only African-American writer on the show. Also, in the movie, near the end, Cooke debuts his civil rights anthem “A Change is Gonna Come” on The Tonight Show, implying it was his argument with Malcolm that helped convince him to release the song, when in fact that even happened before that night. Also, the weakest parts of the movie are the boxing scenes – no matter what King and her cinematographer Tami Reiker do, the fights look staged rather than like a real fight. Still, King and Powers tell a compelling story here. The “is it better to work within the system to make change, or to hammer at the system from the outside” is an argument that has been going on throughout human history, but King and Powers present it well here with the added edge of who is doing the best for African-Americans in U.S. society, as well as what it means to be truly African-American (Brown wonders if the reason why Malcolm is so zealous and unrelenting in his cause is because he’s of lighter skin than himself or Cooke, and feels he has to over-compensate). King and Reiker also open up the play – not just the fight scenes, but Malcom’s phone conversation with Betty and his family late in the movie, and Cooke’s scenes with his wife Barbara (Nicolette Robinson, Odom’s real-life wife) – without distracting from the core of the story, and they use a nice blend of sets and locations (the movie was shot in New Orleans), as well as a moving camera that adds to the charged dynamic between the four men. King and Powers also bring humor in, as when Brown explains why he hasn’t converted to Islam – “You ever had my grandmother’s pork chops?” – or when Malcolm recalls seeing Cooke in concert when the microphones had gone out, or when Clay and Cooke go out for a drink.

Ben-Adir and Goree arguably have the toughest jobs here, not only because Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali continue to be icons to this day (Cooke doesn’t seem to be as well remembered, while Brown’s treatment of women has tarnished his legacy as a football player), but because they’ve each been the subject of well-known biopics with iconic performances – Denzel Washington for the former and Will Smith for the latter. Yet if Ben-Adir and Goree don’t outshine their predecessors, they do justice to their roles. Ben-Adir captures Malcolm’s oratory skills, along with his passion and his feelings for his family. Goree resembles Ali physically more than Smith did, and if he isn’t as sharp at Smith at capturing Ali’s verbal dexterity, he does have an athlete’s swagger, and he’s also good at showing how Ali was a lot more thoughtful than at first glance. Odom, of course, showed in “Hamilton” (as well as the movie version) he had singing chops, and he does a good job of performing Cooke’s songs (as well as “Speak Low”, a song Odom wrote for the movie), but he also does a good job with showing Cooke’s charisma, as well the anger he has towards white society and towards Malcolm’s insinuations. The real surprise here is Hodge. I didn’t think much of Hodge’s performance in the first season of Friday Night Lights (he played Voodoo Tatum, the quarterback who was supposed to take over for Matt Saracen), but he also has an athlete’s swagger while also showing how cool-headed he can be compared to the other three while also cannier than he lets on, as when he realizes his football career is over. King and Powers do the immediate aftermath of the meeting – Ali converted to Islam, Brown retired from football for acting, Cooke released “A Change is Gonna Come”, and Malcolm’s home was firebombed – but the strength of One Night in Miami is how King and Powers portray that night.

 

*-Reddick isn’t the only actor known from HBO in the movie – Lawrence Gilliard Jr., his co-star from The Wire, plays Bundini Brown, while Michael Imperioli, from The Sopranos, plays Angelo Dundee.