‘One Night in Miami’ is a joyful celebration of four Black icons

“Can’t nobody else understand what it’s like being one of us, ‘cept us,” Cassius Clay (Eli Goree) tells Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) late into One Night in Miami. “You know: Young. Black. Righteous. Famous. Unapologetic.” 

He is, obviously, correct. Cassius, Sam, and the two friends waiting for them back at the hotel, Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) and Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir) are in a class of their own. They’re so famous you probably don’t even need me, or this movie, to explain to you why they’re famous.

So One Night in Miami doesn’t really try. Though it does spend a few minutes at the top introducing each of the men — sketching out, in deft strokes, what they’re known for, how others perceive them, and how they feel about how others perceive them in a world run by white people — it’s more interested in digging past all that to find the men inside the myth and the personal inside the political. What emerges is a vivid snapshot of an intimate moment before everything changed, for these characters and for the world.

One Night in Miami finds the men inside the myth and the personal inside the political.

The film gathers the four men in Malcolm’s hotel room on the night of Feb. 25, 1964, ostensibly to celebrate Cassius winning the World Heavyweight Championship, though it’ll turn out he and Malcolm have a few other reasons for hosting. Each of these four men is facing a crossroads in his life, and over the course of the evening each gets to consider and reconsider the paths they’re on — in between bouts of joking, teasing, and playing keep-away with Malcolm’s expensive new camera. 

One Night in Miami was scripted by Kemp Powers based on his own stage play, and its theatrical roots show in the rhythm of its chatter and the insularity of its setting. A few concessions are made to the cinematic format, but Regina King, in her feature directing debut, wisely resists the temptation to dress it up too much with unnecessary location changes or ostentatious camera angles. She trusts in the brilliance of the premise and the chemistry of her actors to keep the momentum flowing, and she’s right to do so.

Not much “happens” in One Night in Miami, at least in the sense of bombshells or plot twists. The very lack of excitement is the excitement. Outside, these men’s public personas serve sometimes as a beacon, sometimes as a shield, and sometimes as an albatross. Within the four walls of this room, however, they’re free to cast off those burdens among the only other people in the world who know what it’s like to carry them. We’re being allowed into something precious and private, and it’s unexpectedly touching to see these towering figures simply kick back and relax. (To the extent they’re able, at least — Malcolm carries paranoia with him wherever he goes, and true events will prove it entirely justified.)

Goree sets the tone with is portrayal of Cassius as the playful little brother of the group, jumping on beds and admiring himself in the mirror. Odom’s Sam is all smiles, but some of those smiles hide spikes. Hodge is a standout as the Jim, the sturdy and level-headed peacekeeper. But it’s Malcolm who is the center of this universe. Ben-Adir exerts a gravitational pull so powerful the entire movie seems to reorient itself around him, but so subtle it’s not clear any of the characters are even aware it’s happening. Call it presence or magnetism or gravitas or charisma — whatever it is that makes a star impossible to ignore, Ben-Adir has it.

One Night in Miami embraces the fun of its premise, letting its characters tuck into bowls of vanilla ice cream or root around Sam’s guitar case for liquor, rib each other about women or crack each other up with a well-timed zinger. As the night creeps on, however, weightier topics bubble to the surface. The friends grapple with their own Black identities and each others’, butting heads over religious belief and personal responsibility and economic freedom and the powers and limitations of their respective platforms.

They’re debates we’ve had countless times before, and are still having today. What makes them land here, and what keeps them from feeling too self-consciously topical, is the same quality that makes the rest of One Night in Miami click — its commitment to seeing these men as humans first, and legends second. The arguments flow organically from each character’s personality and personal experiences as we understand them, and spill into the fault lines that exist in every friendship. Of course Malcolm knows just how to needle Sam bout his appeal to white audiences, and of course Jim has his own observations about what’s behind Malcolm’s commitment to the cause.

Eventually the night must end, and One Night in Miami fades out with each man taking the experience of that night into his next big turning point. It doesn’t suggest anything’s been solved for good, or even for very long; a quick glance at Wikipedia will reveal that tragedy will befall half the group inside of a year. But it allows us, for a couple of hours, to celebrate that heady moment in time were alive and well and on the brink of great change, and love these men not just for what made them extraordinary, but what made them ordinary. 

One Night in Miami is now playing at the Toronto International Film Festival. Amazon Studios will distribute the film at a date to be determined.