Based on a number of the projects she’s picked like If Beale Street Could Talk, starring roles in shows like Watchmen, ABC’s short-lived social drama American Crime, and voicing Huey Freeman on The Boondocks, there’s always been something of a conscious streak to Regina King’s work. So it’s not much of a shock that she lends that same energy to One Night In Miami, her directorial debut based on a Kemp Powers (co-director of Pixar’s Soul) stage play.
Her account of a meeting between who she described in the press as “the real-live Avengers”- Muhammad Ali, then still known as Cassius Clay (Eli Goree), Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.), and Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) feel like it’s designed to play with the audience’s expectations, yet at the same time she’s able to make her subjects come off quite believable.
It’s always tricky to bring stage works onto the big screen in general (or streaming on Amazon Plus, let alone one that’s not particularly elaborate and is pretty talky. But the writing, camera work, and direction are on-point enough to make everything exciting, on top of it being food for thought. You can see points in the story where Regina’s inner Huey is almost coming out, as this almost feels like the kind of movie he’d direct. (Meanwhile, Riley Freeman’s on the set complaining about wanting more girls, cars, and explosions.)
Each part of the quartet comes to the encounter with a ton on their mind- NFL icon and promising hit actor Jim is having trouble settling back into his hometown in Georgia, and Malcolm is dealing with a possible split between him and the Nation of Islam while J. Edgar Hoover’s watching him. Ali’s struggled recently against Henry Cooper and his fight team’s not pleased with how Malcolm and the Nation have been handling his publicity, while Sam is reeling from a performance that didn’t go well with his majority-white audience.
So needless to say, there’s always a hint of tension in the air as the four get their feelings off their chests. Having KO’ed Sonny Liston, Ali gives off the air that he’s ready to party, but Sam and Jim both find out that him and Malcolm actually are aiming for a more serious discussion about their respective roles in the decade’s civil rights movements.
They all have their own approach on how to navigate these tough issues, with Sam opting for wanting to succeed in spite of systemic inequities, causing him to butt heads with Malcolm who’s pushing for full-bore change. Brown is very focused on his personal evolution in spite of what anyone else thinks, and Ali has a succinct take on Black Power’s true meaning, which to him is just doing and living however one pleases without hate getting in the way.
King has a knack for crafting affecting scenes that sneak up on the viewer when they’ve been put into a sense of comfort. One especially notable scene with Beau Bridges as a community leader talking with Jim made me think at first “oh he seems like a cool guy, not really racist.” Then he swerves the audiences, and I just was like “oh, theeeeeerrree it is.” Still, Jim’s able to keep a sense of perspective, as he warns Malcolm in a well-written scene about not letting his cause make him forget “the little things”. It reminded me of a scene in No Country For Old Men when Tommy Lee Jones’ character is lamenting to Barry Corbin about not being able to make the world better, and Corbin calmly reminds him “that’s vanity”.
Whatever ego and vanity any of these men had, Ali especially, was also that of a very informed and passionate kind. All four icons are not only played quite well by the lead actors (Eli Goree’s Ali particularly impressed me, not trying to knock Will Smith but Goree just blew him away here), but they’re all allowed to make valid points.
It’s interesting as to how the viewer’s personality will probably play a factor in which one they may side with the most (me, I found myself connecting with Sam Cooke and Jim Brown fairly often). Heck, it may have been more apt for Regina to make some Ninja Turtle allegories as opposed to the Avengers, because that’s how much each man’s essence impacts their argument. Expect here, you’d want to exchange pizza for vanilla ice cream, which Malcolm has a taste for and is his idea of wilding out (and the irony is not lost on the other three, in a funny bit).
The thing that makes One Night In Miami such a fun watch is Regina King wisely understands that generic hagiography is boring. Instead, she’s made a film that wants to play with your preconceived ideas of some very charismatic historical figures, who still have meaningful things to say even many decades later. If you’re in for a high-brow adult drama that’s smart and will make you think, I can recommend it well enough. As always, if you’ve checked it out on Amazon Prime, let us know your opinion on it at FAN’s social media spots!