Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hour, 54 minutes
Director: Regina King
Quick Impressions:
I’ve been so excited to see this movie. For one thing, it’s Regina King’s directorial debut. I remember when she won Best Supporting Actress a couple of years ago, and everyone called it a career award, acknowledging an exemplary body of work. Sometimes when an actor gets career acknowledgement at long last like that, they disappear. What a gratifying change that instead of vanishing, King has transitioned into directing, and that her first film is getting all kinds of awards buzz! Oscar enthusiasts should be thrilled. People frequently insist that the Oscars are irrelevant and meaningless, but Regina King’s obviously meant something. Now she’s directing. This is also a good sign that real change may be happening in Hollywood. I was incredibly excited to see this movie, honestly, just because King directed it. That would have been enough to get me to buy a ticket (in an ordinary year when I still did things like, you know, leave the house).
Also the premise of this movie sounded so fun to me. In college, I remember sometimes being asked to write an imagined dialogue between real people with famous ideas (maybe with some fictional characters thrown in). I’m pretty sure I’ve done this on essay tests in multiple classes, but I had one professor who gave such prompts all the time. I find them so delightful. You know, imagine Aristotle, Picasso, Hitler, and Conrad gather in a diner. Now write a dialogue of their discussion. (Actually, that doesn’t sound delightful at all! I just wrote down the first random names that popped into my head. That discussion sounds like no fun, and I would probably eat somewhere else–unless the diner had a hidden draw like amazing pie.)
But you get the idea. This movie focuses on a real meeting between four icons–Malcolm X, the soon-to-be Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, and Sam Cooke–one night in Miami in February, 1964, just after Cassius Clay challenged Sonny Liston and won the title of Heavyweight Champion of the World. Apparently all four men actually did attend the fight. (Obviously Ali attended. The others were in the audience.) Then afterwards, the four of them got together to celebrate in Malcolm X’s motel room. That’s all true. The conversations they had behind closed doors are what screenwriter Kemp Powers (who also wrote the stage play) has imagined for us.
These ventriloquized conversations are every bit as engaging, intellectually stimulating, moving, profound, provocative, and entertaining as I expected, so my husband and I thoroughly enjoyed the film.
The Good:
As I finally discovered on Disney+ this summer, Leslie Odom, Jr. made a great Aaron Burr in Hamilton, and he’s pretty amazing as Sam Cooke, too. Cooke was the person I knew least about going into the film. In fact, I knew nothing about him. (Well, not quite nothing. I was aware that there used to be a popular singer named Sam Cooke who died before I was born. So I knew his name.) But Odom’s performance is the one that seems to be getting the most traction, probably because of how well he sings. I am not familiar enough with Sam Cooke to gasp, “He looked just like him!” or “He had his speech patterns down perfectly!” Before seeing this movie, I had no idea how the real Cooke looked or sounded (when speaking), but after watching Odom in this role, I now feel I have a very good sense of the man. (I hope the movie has not led me astray!) Odom sings beautifully, and his delivery lends power to his spoken lines. All four main actors give good performances, but by virtue of all the singing, Odom’s is conspicuously strongest.
As young Cassius Clay, Eli Goree is always entertaining. Obviously he does not want for memorable lines and attention-grabbing moments. I mean, he’s playing Muhammad Ali. In that sense, Goree’s role has the lowest degree of difficulty. How can you not be entertaining when you’re playing Muhammad Ali? Goree does a great job showing us both the razzle-dazzle Cash showered on the crowds and the misgivings and soul-searching of the private man. He’s always a welcome presence.
Aldis Hodge plays a really surprising Jim Brown. I’m not surprised that Hodge gives a good performance. He does that every time I see him. My surprise is in the quiet thoughtfulness of Brown. I mean, when you think of a star running back, you think of muscle, toughness, speed, agility. But here, Brown comes across as a surprisingly soulful, philosophical, thoughtful, patient observer of life. I mean, it makes sense that he would be. You’d have to be attuned to what’s going on with the others around you to be a good football player. (I mean, a running back’s got to find the holes!) I had just never considered that much before. Despite being known for his skills as a football player, Brown in this film comes across as potentially the wisest one, certainly the most measured and observant. He could potentially get an Oscar nomination, too, though I think Odom is a much surer bet.
I also think Kingsley Ben-Adir might end up with an Oscar nomination. Even though this is an ensemble, I’d call him the lead. I don’t know if there’s room for him in Best Actor this year, but he gives a fine performance. Probably the one thing about this movie that made the greatest impression on me is its depiction of Malcolm X (so often presented as a violent militant with “dangerous” ideas, sometimes even by sympathists ) as such a sweet, vulnerable, earnest person. Here Malcolm X seems like a cross between your thoughtful, sincerely dedicated schoolmate who exceled on the debate team and Jesus (in movies) right around the time when Judas is about to betray him and his ministry on Earth is coming to an end. Of all the four principal figures in the film, Malcolm X is really the only one whose work I’m actually familiar with. (It would be odd if I’d asked my rhetoric students to watch tapes of boxing matches, football games, or concerts.) (Actually, that would have been really cool.) But at any rate, Malcolm X is the member of this group whose actual work I thought I knew best. Yet, I didn’t expect the portrayal Ben-Adir gives us in this film. His haunted desperation drives the action forward. I enjoyed his vulnerability and his commitment to his mission very much.
The supporting cast is strong, too. I found Joaquina Kalukongo incredibly sympathetic as Malcolm’s wife Betty. I’ve particularly liked Lance Reddick since Fringe, and as one of the body guards assigned by the Nation of Islam to protect Malcolm X, he gets the opportunity to be grim and menacing as only he can. As Reddick’s associate Jamaal, Christian Magby gets to deliver one of my husband’s favorite lines in the film Michael Imperioli also shows up in a brief role early on.
When the end credits rolled, I noticed that Terence Blanchard wrote the score. Had known that in the beginning, I’d have listened more carefully. (Sometimes I suspect I don’t get the full impact of a score when watching with others on a TV at home.) Dialogue is what dominates this movie, though. Well, that and the occasional snatch of a Sam Cooke song.
Best Scene Visually:
In our introduction to Jim Brown, we see a plantation style house surrounded by huge trees draped in Spanish moss.
“Well now I know something horrible will happen,” I joked to my husband (except I was serious). “Trees draped in moss like that look ethereally beautiful, but they’re inextricably connected to slavery. Any time you see them in a movie, you know you’re in a place of evil.”
“So what awful thing will happen?” he wondered, agreeing with my premise and waiting in suspense for the awful thing.
“The house is haunted,” I joked. (Even in movies that don’t focus on slavery, southern mansions like that are filled with Satanic presences and the like. It must be the Spanish moss that lures them.)
We watched and watched, waiting on the edge of our seats for the awful thing. But then Beau Bridges came to the door and had a lovely, warm chat with Jim Brown. And then Beau Bridges’s daughter brought out some delicious glasses of lemonade. (She’s his actual daughter, by the way. The character’s daughter, Emily Carlton, is played by the actor’s real-life daughter Emily Bridges. And later in the film Sam Cooke’s wife Barbara is played by Odom’s real-life wife Nicolette Robinson.)
Anyway, this scene goes on and on and on, and it keeps getting nicer and nicer and nicer…
But don’t be fooled. The awful thing does come at the end. And it’s a real gut punch of gross cruelty.
Best Action Sequence:
Cassius Clay in the ring is always fun to watch. Everybody is gathered in Miami that night in the first place to watch his title fight with Sonny Liston.
Best Scene:
The back-and-forth between Sam and Malcolm creates almost all of the most electrifying moments in the film. As my husband noted, each criticizes the other for something the person being challenged is already aware of and struggling with. A nice change of pace from this comes when Malcolm recalls and praises a powerful performance Sam once put on in Boston.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment, Leslie Odom, Jr.:
Odom is the standout here. All four men give good performances, but I’d say his vocal performance, singing in the style of Sam Cooke, pushes him into “something special” territory. He’s already won critics’ awards and drawn pretty much universal praise.
When reflecting on the value of “a piece of the pie” Cooke gets what may be the best line in the entire movie (which is something considering that he’s sharing the screen with Malcolm X and the future Muhammad Ali).
Odom delivers this line, and many others, with just the right degree of fiery intensity.
It’s worth noting that as the film ends, Odom also sings a song that he himself wrote. I hope it’s eligible for Best Original Song because it would be a worthy winner.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment, Kingsley Ben-Adir:
It’s hard not to root for Malcolm X in this film because he’s so painfully aware of his impending doom. He seems to be living in a different story from everyone else. None of the others realizes the gravity of the danger Malcolm is in, but he knows. He behaves like a man fully aware that he doesn’t have long to live. The power of his performance doesn’t rely on any one shining moment. Instead, it has a cumulative character. I like the moment when he looks out the window of the diner, then pretends to his friends that everything is fine.
The vanilla ice cream thing is pretty great, too.
The Negatives:
One Night in Miami does have its limitations. For a movie getting Oscar buzz, it’s very talky. Like Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, it’s adapted from a stage play, and honestly, it could still be a stage play. We may occasionally see Cassius Clay in the boxing ring or the swimming pool, but most of the time, this is just four guys talking in a motel room.
In some ways, it’s like watching a history project made for a high school honors class or a college presentation. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I’m just saying that some historical, autobiographical films are made to fill the big screen and light it up with splendor. Think Laurence of Arabia or Gandhi. This one loses nothing on a small screen and would actually be fine even if you lost the screen and had actors (maybe even reading from scripts) performing on a stage with no set. The words and voices are what matter here. (The faces factor in, too.)
What I’m saying is, this is not a particularly cinematic movie. It deals with huge concepts and a pivotal moment in history, but it’s no epic. So if you’re looking for a movie that makes you crave a bucket of popcorn in a giant auditorium of yore, One Night in Miami isn’t it.
Pacing is sometimes an issue, too. The film flows from one conversation (or argument) into another. This structure brings with it a certain monotony. Once the main scenario is underway, the energy in the conversations themselves entirely determines the rise and fall of emotions in the film. Nothing “happens.” These four icons all lived extremely eventful lives, but, for the most part, those events are not dramatized here. Action bookends the movie instead of sustaining it. Most of the movie is just one conversation after another.
Now there’s nothing wrong with that. We are talking about meaty, fascinating conversations. Still, there are certain limitations to this format. This isn’t a wacky comedy adventure. (The historical figures don’t run amok in a shopping mall in San Dimas.) This is a movie about ideas. More than that, it’s a movie about the soul, about deep truths, essences of things, about what life means. It’s sort of like the old conversation starter, “If you could invite X number of famous people, living or dead, to dinner….” The point of that game is not to guess what could happen. (“Then Napoleon started stealing the silverware, just stuffing it into his jacket!”) The point is to imagine what questions you would ask of the these famous figures, and how they would answer you based on their known thoughts, and what they would say about each other’s ideas. So this isn’t a movie about things happening. It is a movie about people who made things happen having a deep, heart-felt conversation with one another.
Again, that’s not bad, but it does mean that for the bulk of its runtime, the movie goes as follows: “Hey, let’s have a conversation about this.” “Great. And now let’s have a conversation about that.” “Now I disagree, so let’s have an argument.” “Man, I guess that got pretty heated, so now let’s have a conversation to get things back in perspective.” And so on, endlessly. And this isn’t Hamilton. The finer points of famous figures’ philosophical stances aren’t revealed through infectiously catchy song-and-dance numbers.
This is less a criticism of the film than a simple pointing out of its limitations. What it’s doing, One Night in Miami does extremely well. But it basically does nothing else. So watch with the proper expectations.
Overall:
One Night in Miami delivers on the promise of its premise, showing us one special moment when four iconic Americans spent a night celebrating a win by arguing with each other and considering eating vanilla ice cream. It’s streaming free on Amazon Prime, so if you have any interest at all, why not check it out?