Movie Reviews: One Night in Miami is a politically-charged and timely drama
One Night In Miami
Sport, music and politics collide in (12A), which unfolds in the wake of Cassius Clay’s (Eli Goree) victory over Sonny Liston in a world heavyweight title fight on February 25, 1964. Anticipating a party to remember, and having invited along his close friends Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) and the football star Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge), Cassius is disappointed to learn that their host, Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), has other plans for the evening. Adapted from his own stage play by Kemp Powers (who co-wrote and co-directed Pixar’s recent release ), and directed by Regina King, is a fictional account of a meeting between historical figures who were cultural icons. The story revolves around Malcolm’s struggle to persuade his friends to take responsibility for their public personas and channel their fame into the cause of civil rights and black empowerment, with Cassius Clay (soon to become Muhammad Ali), Jim Brown and Sam Cooke all offering their own counter-arguments as they try to convince Malcolm that the issue isn’t as black-and-white as he perceives it (Malcom’s assassination in 1965, of course, casts a long shadow over the night’s events). Regina King and Kemp Powers embrace the story’s stage origins, placing the emphasis on dialogue and the intense interaction between the characters as they pace their claustrophobic motel room, and they’re rewarded with four strong performances, and particularly those of Eli Goree’s portrayal of the restless, charismatic Cassius Clay, and Aldis Hodge’s cynical, brooding Jim Brown, who believes that all the black men in the room are ‘gladiators’ who are at the mercy of their rulers’ thumbs-up or thumbs-down. A nuanced and frequently caustic exploration of what it meant to be black, talented and famous in the early 1960s, is a politically-charged and timely drama. (Amazon Prime)
