Young, Black, & Righteous

One Night in Miami , a beautiful and timely film about the friendship between four legends who spent a night together in a hotel room is easily one of my favorite films of 2021 so far. I’ve watched the film so many times and felt inspired to write my take on the important and necessary film. I’m grateful for Scalawag Magazine for collaborating with me to publish my musings. Below is an excerpt of the review. I encourage everyone to watch One Night in Miami streaming on Amazon Prime Video today!

Illustration courtesy of Scalawag Magazine

“We entered the hotel lounge, a small room brightened by light blue walls and a yellow bar. The young men chattered, taking seats at the retro counter, their locs swaying as they relaxed into the colorful chairs.

I had organized this trip to Miami for a group of young Black men from New Orleans. My goal was for them to meet local organizers and cultural workers empowering Black youth in the city—folks like Dream Defenders and the team behind Smoke Signals Studios.

This day we’d taken a trip to the Historic Hampton House. Located in the Brownsville neighborhood, a cultural center for Black people during the 1950s and 1960s of segregated Miami, this iconic hotel had been a popular place for Black folks to socialize. The who’s who of celebrities made history at this establishment: Martin Luther King Jr., James Brown, Althea Johnson, Nat King Cole— the list goes on.

While huddled around the bar, the tour guide told us a story that caught all of our attention: a special night when Muhammad Ali, Sam Cooke, Jim Brown, and Malcolm X came here to celebrate Ali’s victory as heavyweight champion of the world.

The tour guide showed us a photograph taken that particular night: Malcolm X taking a picture of his famous friends in the same room we were sitting in now. For just a moment, a hush descended over the usually talkative group.

These young men, who were all in the process of understanding identity and manhood, would have been peers of Ali at that time. They were just learning how to embrace a kind of Blackness and masculinity that allowed them to feel a complexity of emotions: vulnerability, pride, tenderness, rage. They began to buzz with eager questions about what Ali, Jim, Malcolm, and Sam talked about that night.

I craved to know too. With all of these legends in one room, my mind swirled with thoughts about what these young men could learn from them. What exactly were these four men talking about that night, so many years ago?

The new film, One Night in Miami, attempts to imagine what could have transpired at the Hampton House when revolutionary leader Malcolm X, boxing champ Cassius Clay, soon to be known as Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, the most valuable football player in league, and soulful crooner Sam Cooke celebrated together. While pictures prove that these men spent an evening together, there isn’t a direct account of what occurred behind closed doors. All we know for sure is that vanilla ice cream was served.

One Night in Miami provides a window into intimate conversations between the four friends about identity, self-determination, and freedom—conversations we are still having today.

Expectations for the film were high. One Night in Miami is the feature film directorial debut of Regina King, four time Emmy award winning actress and talented television director. As an actor’s director, King’s understanding of the physical, mental, and often spiritual processes required for an actor to become a character enabled her to guide the film’s four leads as they boldly stepped into the shoes of legends.

Each of the actors rose to the occasion. With these grand men as protagonists, the film could have easily become bogged down with the pressure to depict them as they lived as public figures. However, the big personas of the four Black icons were successfully stripped away, laying bare a more intimate portraiture of their desires, hopes, and fears. It is a glimpse into the interior lives of Malcolm, Jim, Sam, and Cassius.

Under King’s direction and cinematographer Tami Reiker’s fluency with the camera, more space was given for their relationships to expand and move. There are no intense action scenes in One Night in Miami, except for the depiction of two boxing matches. Instead, the film provides a slow, steady, and contemplative story that predominantly takes place in a single hotel room. It is a cinematic accomplishment to shoot an entire film in one location and make it feel expansive on screen rather than claustrophobic. The camera glides with ease and flows from character to character, sometimes lingering on their faces well after they speak, thus taking the viewer on an exclusive ride, as though the audience were truly a fly on the wall.
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You can read the full review on Scalawag Magazine here.