One Night in Miami
“Period films disproportionately favor male luminaries, casting history in a skewed light where the contributions of women remain obscure.”
Title: One Night in Miami (2020)
Director: Regina King 👩🏾🇺🇸
Writer: Kemp Powers 👨🏾🇺🇸
Reviewed by Li 👩🏻🇺🇸
Technical: 4.5/5
Toronto International Film Festival may be months in the rearview mirror, but two films have stuck with me since: Audience award winner Nomadland and Regina King’s directorial feature debut, One Night in Miami.
Having come out in select theaters yesterday, the latter’s Prime Video release on January 15 will be the date to mark for most audiences. What they’ll find in King’s adaptation of the 2013 play by Kemp Powers is a timeless, philosophical discussion about Black empowerment—not just how to achieve it, but how to even begin defining it. Yet such an expansive topic feels accessible thanks to an escapist setting, which remixes 1960s history with nostalgic warmth. Moreover, its intimate setting behind the closed door of a motel room lends intriguing voyeurism that holds a viewer in thrall.
Specifically, the story presents an imagined convening between four Civil Rights-era giants: activist Malcolm X (Ben Kingsley-Adir), singer Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.), pro football-player-turned-actor Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge), and Cassius Clay, perhaps better known as the boxer Muhammad Ali (Eli Goree). Each actor wields the steel-backed righteousness that would serve the legacies of these men, but King also teases out wide-eyed vulnerability that feels unexpected and deeply moving. By highlighting their humanity—and fallibility, as we see Malcolm X overreach or Clay pick and choose his religious convictions—One Night in Miami deconstructs the flattening effects that glib Black History Month blurbs might like to box them into.
The pacing may overstretch during the middle, as Malcolm X and Cooke hash out their differing views in a grandiose tête-à-tête that turns around in circles. But that elongation of time snaps like a rubber band by the film's end and launches viewers into a finale that delivers chills, making for a lasting impression.
Gender: 2.5/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? NOPE
All modern retellings of Civil Rights history at this point ought to include the mentions of Black women. Titans like Ella Baker or Coretta Scott King drove so much of the movement while women today still carry the torch, such as Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, and Patrisse Cullors who launched #BlackLivesMatter in 2013. It feels increasingly like erasure to cut womens’ voices out of Black history given how integral they were and continue to be.
In One Night in Miami, King thankfully makes her mark. But the story remains tightly focused on the ethos of four Black men, as penned by a male screenwriter. Characters like Malcolm X’s wife Betty Shabazz (Joaquina Kalukango) and their daughter Attallah (Nola Epps) come closest to passing the Bechdel Test, sharing scenes but never actually swapping dialogue independent of their discussions around the family patriarch. Meanwhile, the girlfriend of Cooke stops by for one scene. None of them feel denigrated, but they only exist to further male narratives.
Not every film has to be everything to everyone, of course. It just so happens that period films disproportionately favor male luminaries, casting history in a skewed light where the contributions of women remain obscure. While King’s directorial voice helps balance the notion of who gets to participate in American myth-making, onscreen, One Night in Miami still assumes a male-dominated point of view.
Race: 5/5
Devoted to parsing Black empowerment, One Night in Miami spends its runtime mediating a conversation about race relations in the United States: Will economic freedom liberate Black people, as the well-off Cooke might advocate? Or is it about dismantling white supremacy altogether, per Malcolm X? The topics ricochet and build on top of each other in a messy fashion that feels all too real.
And it should feel real, because it is. During a press conference for the film, Powers shares where his writing stems from:
The conversation that these guys were having … It’s honestly a conversation that me and my buddies had freshman year in the dormitory at Howard. It’s a conversation being had right now in dormitories at Howard, and Hampton, and more.
That authenticity feels imbued throughout the film. These aren’t staid lines recited from textbooks. Colorism isn’t just spoken about theoretically, but rather arrives through Brown’s tactful but firm mention to Malcom X that his light skin affords him certain privileges. Differing strategies on achieving liberation don’t simply sit next to each other as concise op-eds: Malcolm X actively pressures Cooke to change his music and lyrics to further the cause, while Cooke defends himself by naming all the ways his soft power has already created tangible opportunities for other Black people working in entertainment.
Cathartically hashed out onscreen—but realistically never resolved in any pat manner—One Night in Miami reveals the ongoing debates that seem directly teleported from the ‘60s and into today. Their words may be specific to the Black experience, but the chance to see thoughts passionately exchanged in a way that never resorts to effacing each other’s dignity feels, sadly, refreshing. Viewers everywhere can certainly use the reminder of what healthy dialogue looks like.
Bonus for Religion: +1.00
While the film does leave gender issues off the table, the intersection of race and religion occupies prime real estate. The politicization of faith comes to the fore as audiences observe the changeover in leadership at the Nation of Islam (NOI), from Malcolm X to Louis Farrakhan—the latter of whom has distressingly escalated the organization’s record of antisemitism and homophobia.
The film shows how religion can be manipulated in politics. We watch Malcolm X practice his faith as a devout Muslim, conducting his daily prayers and refraining from drink, even as he makes the difficult decision to denounce NOI and thereby give up the wages and housing the organization provided. Never is religion itself demonized, and the grappling of faith we see Clay undergo just before he publicly converts to Islam seldom gets the space it deserves on the silver screen.
Mediaversity Grade: B+ 4.33/5
One Night in Miami conducts the imperative task of tackling one of America’s longest running sins in a way that never feels like work. Its ultimate triumph, however, lies in its example of how discourse can and should be held—with heated passion that fights ideas tooth and nail, and not the moral character of the debaters. In these troubled times, that may be easier said than done. But it never hurts to hold up ideals as guiding lights.
Like One Night in Miami? Try these other adaptations of plays or books by Black writers.
Fences (2016)
The Hate U Give (2018)
Native Son (2019)