Four icons of the Civil Rights era walk into a hotel room…
One Night in Miami—adapted by Kemp Powers from his own play, as well as the directorial debut of actress Regina King—manages to elevate that conceit (and its obvious stage origins) with sharp performances and a bold directorial hand. (King announces she’s here for real with an opening shot that confidently pushes in from the back of an arena right into Cassius Clay’s boxing ring.) Eli Goree plays Clay, who is planning to announce his conversion to Islam and gathers with three others after the fight to consider the decision: Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.), and Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge). As the men bounce from topic to topic, One Night in Miami can feel a bit pre-programmed, like a fictionalized Black history lesson along the lines of Hidden Figures. But Ben-Adir’s Malcolm X and Odom Jr.’s Sam Cooke come alive beyond the construct (it helps that both get intermittent scenes set outside of that hotel room), revealing the living, breathing souls behind the legends. Odom Jr. also gets to show off his Hamilton pipes in a few music sequences, including a flashback to a magical, a cappella performance he once pulled off when a concert hall’s sound equipment went out.
