This movie was great. I had been looking forward to watching One Night In Miami based on the premise and the director, Regina King. I have never known her to direct anything and wondered what her flavor would be. That is a thing I look for in movies. There are some directors that have zero flavor and its like the camera is just recording footage (like with The Undoing which was so flavorless I refuse to even write a review for the first episode I couldn't even finish). This is a conversation between four very influential Black men talking about what they could do, are doing, and will do to help Blacks in America. The men are Cassius Clay, Sam Cooke, Jim Brown, and Malcolm X. It begins in 1963 after Clay almost loses a fight because of his showboating. Cooke has a horrible performance in front of a white audience that doesn't even want him there. Brown has a really nice conversation with a white friend but when he offers to help the guy move his furniture he says they “don't allow ni**ers in the house.” Malcolm talks to his wife about his plans to leave the Nation of Islam.
In early 1964 after Clay beats Sonny Liston. Clay plans on converting and will announce it publicly soon. All four men meet in a hotel room. Cooke arrives first. He wants to go party. Same with Brown. Malcolm and Cooke get into it regarding Malcolm's belief that Cooke is pandering to white audiences with his music and plays him some Bob Dylan and how he is saying more with his music than Cooke. Other conversations are about how Malcolm doesn't actually have a job. Clay's struggle with converting to Islam. There is far more but I'm not gonna sit here writing that all out. I loved everything about this. The music was incredible. The acting was so good that after a certain point every actor became who they were portraying. I felt like I was sitting in on one of the most important conversations ever. Out of the four men only Jim Brown is still alive. Malcolm was killed before he was 40 and Cook was shot and killed in his early 30's. Its only January and I know this is going to be one of my favorite movies of the year. This is available on Amazon.
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
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