On Feb. 25, 1964 at the Convention Hall in Miami Beach, Fla., Cassius Clay beats Sonny Liston to become the heavyweight champion of the world. This sets the stage for ‘One Night in Miami.’
Anxiety rules over the body and weighs on a person’s defenses. Malcolm X was no different. Kingsley Ben-Adir played the iconic activist differently. In contrast, Denzel Washington’s el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz wasn’t the same, channeling a fiery and defiant demeanor with every step he took on screen.
Adir’s Malcolm X was vulnerable which didn’t fall short on screen. When One Night takes place, Malcolm knows he’s going to die. Threats and bounties have been placed on his head along with his wife and children.
How’s that for anxiety?
One Night in Miami is the fictional account of real-life friends coming to the city for Clay’s fight. Football MVP Jim Brown delivered commentary. Rhythm and blues singer Sam Cooke and Malcolm X were both in the audience. That is fact. The conversations they had after the fight (because no one was present to record) is fiction.
Cooke and Brown went to Malcolm’s hotel suite (guarded by two members of the Nation of Islam) for a victory reception. Clay knew better than to expect a party thrown by Malcolm X of all people — though the activist tried his best with two quarts of vanilla ice cream.
At one point Malcolm reminds the fellas that he had more of a street rep than all of them put together. They laughed.
The film revolves around Malcolm’s anxiety and how he gets his point across through conversations and ultimately arguments. Truthfully, all the men were going through individual crises of consciousness.
Jim Brown who was playing for the Cleveland Browns at the time, traveled to a plantation to visit someone he had been acquainted with. He was met with fanfare — the (white) man even shook his hand and gave him a glass of lemonade. But when he tries to enter the house he’s met with, “you know we don’t allow niggers in our house.”
Sam Cooke played the Copacabana which, today, might be considered the equivalent of getting a coveted Las Vegas residency. He delivered a solid, pretty performance with a bow. The venue was only half full — the claps, fleeting. All his previous success, tainted, because of a lackluster showing at the Cabana.
Clay hadn’t told Brown and Cooke that he was joining the Nation of Islam. Malcolm hadn’t told any of the men, that he was leaving the Nation and forming his own Islamic organization. But the main tension has to do with Malcolm X and Sam Cooke.
The activist was feared and often revered by everyone. That’s not a generalization. It was one or the other — sometimes both. While Brown shied away from saying too much and Clay admired the leader — Cooke and Malcolm took each other to task.
Both wanted to help their people and felt very deeply that they did. Though it was true on both counts, neither fought or pushed back the way the other felt they should.
As it would turn out, that night set each of the men on a path that would benefit the culture to this day.
Peacemakers Clay and Brown played by Aldis Hodge and Eli Goree deliver electrifying performances — Hodge with Brown’s quiet swagger and in contrast, Goree with Clay’s playful and unbeknownst (at the time) powerful demeanor.
Leslie Odom’s voice floats effortlessly over Sam Cooke’s 4-octave tenor as the crooner holds his own in this ensemble cast.
Make no mistake about it, One Night in Miami is about the dialogue these brothers had, as imagined by Kemp and seen through Regina King’s lens. In his book (which is referenced twice in the film) Malcolm X talks about his relationships with performers and athletes, specifically Muhammad Ali. These conversations could have happened in real life because each of these men were real friends.
But perhaps the most poignant conversation happens between Jim and Malcolm after Clay tries to retrieve a frustrated Cooke. There, Malcolm is given the space to be especially vulnerable and shares the news that he is leaving the Nation.
A year later both Malcolm and Sam Cooke would both be killed.
That night in Miami was important, why?
Because Cassius Clay would later become Muhammad Ali. He would use his platform to bring about change in and out of the ring. Jim brown would quit football making an even bigger mark than he ever did on the field, and because Sam Cooke would pen A Change is Gonna Come — a freedom cry we still use today, especially most recently.
The conversations are what show us who they were as friends and as Black men who clearly loved each other. They were, what we should be, not necessarily agreeable at all times, but definitely united.
One Night in Miami was originally a stage play written by Kemp Powers. The film adaptation is directed by Regina King with Powers penning the screenplay as well. The film is streaming now on Amazon Prime.