"One Night in Miami's" Impressive directing and talented cast allow Prime Video to kick off 2021s movie year in stylish fashion
“One Night in Miami” film review
83/100 “sweet”
By Quinn Marcus
Not only did Prime Video lead 2020 with relevant, socially-aware films such as Steve McQueen’s five-part movie series, Small Axe, but they pretty much single-handedly saved the end of a horrid year. Out of all the films that came out last year, Prime Video stayed the most consistent in terms of quality. Well, now they’re back with Regina King’s directorial debut, One Night in Miami, and this was a damn good kickoff to the 2021 movie season. I can’t wait to see what else Prime Video has in store, including Coming 2 America, the sequel to 1988’s Coming to America, and one of my most anticipated films of the year. Although One Night in Miami is certainly not a perfect film, I had to give credit to it for being the first film for a newcomer director who surely has a positive streak of movies ahead of her. I will watch anything that Regina King directs in the future, with the directing being the standout of the film, and I hope she continues to have a successful career. If you don’t know who that is, King is an actress known for her work in 2004’s Ray, and 2018’s If Beale Street Could Talk. Her most recent role being HBO’s critically acclaimed series, Watchmen. But enough about the past, let’s talk about this fantastic film.
One Night in Miami tells the story of a fictional night in Miami in which Malcolm X, Jim Brown, Cassius Clay, and Sam Cooke gather to discuss their views on the Civil Rights movement, and society during the 1960s at large.
One interesting thing I learned while watching was that the film was originally a play. The writer hired for the adaptation, Kemp Powers, writer of Pixar’s Soul also wrote the play on which the film is based upon. The screenplay for the most part was sublime. It was in the first act where I found my flaws. The characters are set up entertainingly, but I didn’t feel anything special or meaningful about these introductions. In other words, I found the opening act to be generic and very by-the-books, which is okay as it is the first film Regina King has done, but that was probably my biggest issue. It’s not until tensions between our key characters rise, and they start to have deeper arguments when the film begins to pick up. What King did really well handling these scenes was showing the audience who has control over each conversation. This was done through a terrific use of camera angles. My favorite of these scenes coming from the fights between Malcolm X, portrayed by Kingsley Ben-Adir, and Sam Cooke, played by Leslie Odom Jr. None of these unique, emotionally powerful conversations could have been done without the script. What the screenplay does so well is that it actually takes its time. We’ll often be given these softer, calmer, kinder talks amongst a couple of these individuals after a fight finishes in which one of them will learn a valuable lesson. There’s a subplot in the film about these creepy, most definitely racist white guys standing outside the motel that didn’t really add much to the experience for me, and they didn’t have much to do with the plot…so, why have them in there? My papa did make the point that if you don’t know the history of Malcolm X’s paranoia as much, you’ll probably consider it a flaw.
One thing that came as a shock to me was that the cinematography by Tami Reiker was colorful, vibrant, and added an immense amount of style to the film. As I said before, the use of camera angles was done really well, but in such a small setting, you’d think it’d be hard to pack so much into a single frame, but Reiker does it in an extremely effective way. This was a film that was pleasing to look at, a point that I didn’t expect to make walking in. I’m sure there are going to be a lot of people who’ll think to themselves ‘the characters go nowhere, therefore nothing happens.’ Let me shed some light for you, this movie was based upon a play, which means unless you want to drastically alter something about the setting, the characters aren’t going anywhere. This is a very character-driven movie, there’s not much of a plot, it’s literally about four men discussing issues that some of us are too afraid to talk about ourselves. And if you can’t understand that, then you’re gonna have a problem with this movie.
Every member of the cast was excellent. Leslie Odom Jr., most known for his role as Aaron Burr in Hamilton was given the perfect role as the legendary singer, Sam Cooke, and he’s pretty damn good. In fact, the final shot of the movie is on his face as he wraps up singing a song, and my jaw dropped as the miraculous final frame faded to black. He was easily a standout of the film, but my favorite performance has to be from Kingsley Ben-Adir, playing Malcolm X. I hadn’t seen this guy in much before this, but he carried most of the dramatic heft of the film and was easily the person I cared about the most. I won’t get into any spoilers, but one of the arguments between him and Odom Jr. felt weirdly cleansing to watch. It was moments like these that made me go ‘yes! This is why I love cinema!’ or ‘now that is quality acting!’ Eli Goree (Cassius Clay) and Aldis Hodge (Jim Brown) were both great as well, but their performances were sidelined maybe just a tad.
The final verdict is…One Night in Miami successfully carries on after a sluggish opening act with incredible performances, assured directing, exceptional dialogue, and a surefire sense of style…$PLURGE IT!