One Night in Miami is a 2020 American drama film directed by Regina King (in her feature directorial debut), from a screenplay by Kemp Powers based on his stage play of the same name. It stars Kingsley Ben-Adir, Eli Goree, Aldis Hodge, and Leslie Odom Jr., and tells a fictionalized story of Cassius Clay, Malcolm X, Jim Brown, and Sam Cooke, as the group celebrates Clay's surprise title win over Sonny Liston in a Miami hotel room in February 1964.
It had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 7, 2020, and was the first film directed by an African-American woman to be selected in the festival's history. It received overwhelmingly positive reviews, with critics praising King's direction, the performances, and the writing. It is scheduled to be released in a limited release on December 25, 2020, followed by digital streaming on Prime Video on January 15, 2021.
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 97% based on 77 reviews, with an average rating of 8.28/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "A hauntingly powerful reflection on larger-than-life figures, One Night in Miami finds Regina King in command of her craft in her feature directorial debut." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 80 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Kate Erbland of IndieWire gave the film an "A–" and said that "Yes, One Night in Miami often looks like the play it's based on, but King and her stars make the most of any stage limitations, and the filmmaker frequently turns her eye to well-assembled overhead shots and graceful use of mirrors to keep her many characters in the frame all at once."
Owen Gleiberman of Variety praised the characters and the film's parallels to modern-day, writing: "One Night in Miami is a casually entrancing debate about power on the part of those who have won it but are still figuring out what to do with it." At TIFF, the film was named the first runner up for the People's Choice Award.
In July 2019, it was announced Regina King would direct the film and serve as an executive producer, from a screenplay by Kemp Powers based upon his stage play of the same name. In January 2020, it was announced Kingsley Ben-Adir, Eli Goree, Aldis Hodge, Leslie Odom Jr., and Lance Reddick had joined the cast of the film. Principal photography began in January 2020, in New Orleans, Louisiana.
If it were a screenwriter's pitch, it would sound like pure fantasy: four towering icons of the 20th century, in one room, for one night. But it did actually happen, on a humid February evening in Miami 1964, when a 22-year-old Cassius Clay (not yet Muhammad Ali) took the world heavyweight championship against Sonny Liston and brought along three of his closest friends for support and celebration.
That those men — Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X, soul singer Sam Cooke, and football superstar Jim Brown — just happened, like him, to be burgeoning legends is the subject of Oscar-winning actress Regina King's feature directing debut, which bows this week at the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals: a vibrant, galvanizing drama whose surreal circumstances soon fall away to reveal an extraordinary human story.
Kemp Powers' script is an adaptation of his own acclaimed 2013 play of the same name, and its opening scenes do have the stagy contours of theater, heavy on exposition and broad outlines: Clay (Eli Goree) the preening butterfly recently brought low by a knockout punch in London,
Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) tanking a show at the lily-white Copacabana, Brown (Aldis Hodge) encountering an ugly case of velvet-gloved racism in his own backyard, and X (Kingsley Ben-Adir) at home in Detroit, trying to reassure his justifiably anxious wife that they'll be alright.
Those humiliations and downturns are all fodder, though, for what's to come: nearly two hours in which the foursome tease and argue and confess, parrying ideas about politics and Blackness and personal responsibility with electricity that conducts through nearly every scene.
Goree (Ballers), possibly the least known of the four main actors here, brings a gorgeous physicality to Clay — he can't pass a mirror without telling himself how pretty he looks — but a deeper schism too, as a man struggling with whether or not to fully commit his Muslim faith. As Brown, Hodge (TV's Underground, The Invisible Man) offers a mellower presence — driven least, perhaps, by ideology (though hardly an indifferent one; his confrontation with X in the film's final third is almost disconcertingly calm, but it leaves scorch marks).
Hamilton star Odom struts in as Cooke, a proud man with appetites nearly as prodigious as his talents. He wants it all — the girls, the glamor, the money, the next stiff drink. But he's haunted, too, by the ceilings he can't crack, a kind of acceptance white America will never offer him, and X is more than ready to press his finger to that wound.
Maybe in part because it's his own shabby motel room they're in — or because the fervency of his beliefs is so complete — Ben-Adir's Malcolm becomes the wheel the story turns on. A British actor mostly known for U.K. television and theater, Ben-Adir is a revelation here, parsing the many contradictions of an endlessly complicated man with a sensitivity that seems almost supernatural.
If Miami is, in the end, a movie of ideas, King still makes it all look almost impossibly lush: a swooningly costumed mid-'60s time capsule, soaked in Sunshine State atmosphere. But she never forfeits the momentous substance of her message for style. (If there were ever an argument for actors directing actors, this is it.) In extrapolating the mysteries of the night we'll never fully know, she finds something that may not be strictly true to lived history, but possibly even richer: a quintessentially American tale; profane, profound, and beautiful.
One Night in Miami Cast
- Kingsley Ben-Adir as Malcolm X
- Eli Goree as Cassius Clay
- Aldis Hodge as Jim Brown
- Leslie Odom Jr. as Sam Cooke
- Lance Reddick as Brother Kareem
- Nicolette Robinson as Barbara Cooke
- Michael Imperioli as Angelo Dundee
- Beau Bridges as Mr. Carlton
- Joaquina Kalukango as Betty Shabaz
- Jerome A. Wilson as Elijah Muhammad
- Amondre D. Jackson as L.C. Cooke
- Aaron D. Alexander as Sonny Liston
- Christian Magby as Jamaal
- Lawrence Gilliard Jr. as Bundini Brown
- Jeremy Pope as Jackie Wilson
- Christopher Gorham as Johnny Carson
One Night in Miami Release Date
The film had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 7, 2020. It also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it was the runner-up for the People's Choice Award. It has screened or been scheduled to screen at film festivals in Zurich, London, the Hamptons, Mill Valley, Middleburg, Chicago, and Montclair.
Amazon Studios acquired worldwide distribution rights to the film in July 2020. It is scheduled to be released in a limited release on December 25, 2020, followed by streaming on Prime Video on January 15, 2021.
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