Review: One Night in Miami
Thursday, January 14, 2021 at 7:00PM
Regina King’s directorial debut One Night in Miami is a wonderful departure from the traditional biopic formula. Instead of focusing on key events from the lives of the famous, One Night in Miami gives us a fictionalized, night-long conversation four iconic men might have been having at that exact moment in history. The titular night is February 25th, 1964, just after Cassius Clay’s boxing match with Sonny Liston and just before the famous athlete changed his name to Muhammad Ali.
Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Cassius Clay (Eli Goree), musician Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.), and former NFL player Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) gather together in a motel room to discuss the weight they carry as celebrities to help create social change through the Civil Rights Movement. Thanks to the lead actors, along with genius writing by Kemp Powers who adapted his own play for the screen, we’re able to get a glimpse of the real people behind the iconic personas...