Here we go! It’s 2021, and while we’re still deep in the mire of the Oscar season, it’s like 2020 has yet to leave us. As such, one of the last remaining “unseen”, majorly-talked about festival features was Regina King’s directorial debut and ensemble piece, One Night in Miami. It’s a film that comes with a great pedigree, not only with the Oscar winning actress behind the camera, but with a script written by Kemp Powers, who recently co-directed the absolutely stirring Pixar feature Soul. This effort, by contrast, is actually derived from an original stageplay of Powers’.
There are two issues that start One Night off on the wrong foot, at least on paper. It’s another biopic of a sort, completely fictionalized of course. But there’s oft a struggle with these kinds of films to enter into either hagiography in terms of storytelling conviction, or performances that never quite find the third dimension of their subject matter, portraying closer to impersonation. The other problem: the stage to screen transition is usually pretty obvious and creates a flattening effect that neither maintains the intimacy of the stage, nor effectively widens the canvas enough to the make the translation to the screen justified. One Night is able to sidestep a lot of these issues through some deft storytelling choices, but it does occasionally get mired for stretches in some of the same above challenges, though not critically so, and much of it fades away as the running time ticks on, building up momentum like a rolling stone.
The central premise of King and Powers’ collaboration is an imagined gathering of four cultural icons (universally so really, but with special significance in the black community): Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Cassius Clay (Eli Goree), Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) and Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr). It’s a meeting that’s built up with some nicely dynamic intro sequences for each of the four corners of this film’s respective square. This presumptive gathering is intended as a celebration of sorts, with Clay having been newly-crowned the heavyweight champion that same evening in a match in Miami. Malcolm X hosts the other three in what they thought would be a rager, and instead, thanks to some deft planning by the civil rights leader, was more of an organized plan to engage in greater brotherhood with his close friends…while also positioning the ever more famous Clay into a role that will benefit X’s own future and plans.
That probably sounds more insidious than it needed to. In fact, One Night In Miami is really more of a “good-time, hang-out” experience, with its most of its running time centered on those above-mentioned four leads as they reminisce, eat ice cream, drink beer and eventually debate the merits of their own individual ideologies. After it chugs through its bravura opening scenes, setting the respective stage for each player, it does get waylayed a bit with some of the usual biopic struggles, mostly in this case that need to build specific identifiers into the dialogue so the audience can quickly catch up. It may be necessary, but Powers never quite gracefully lands those expository moments, breaking immersion. Though again, it’s the stagebound limitations that create the most significant, albeit limited, drag on the film. While King works hard to vary environments as much as she can, a parking lot conversation here, a rooftop confab there, it’s still a project that’s centered on four guys hanging out in a room, while they and the audience wait for the big moment to drop. Because of this, everything is centered on the dialogue and performances, up to the minute.
Thankfully, that’s where things really start to excel, particularly as One Night in Miami continues to move through its initial set-up of character relationships and varied conflicts. Once it finally gets to the heart of the matter and unveils the dynamism at the heart of its quartet, particularly between X and Cooke, that’s when the film really begins to sing (and sing!). While Goree does a strong mimic of a young Clay, and Hodge is his usually reliable stoic self as Brown, it’s Odom and Ben-Adir that really pull the viewer in, and underscore the film’s own thematic concerns. It’s fascinating to watch the push and pull between a man who was sadly considered a near “bogeyman” figure among the white populace and a popular entertainer who portrayed a far safer, friendlier image, but both worked towards similar ends in terms of expansion of prosperity in the black community. Their antagonism is the defining feature of One Night, and once it becomes fully-defined, those remaining minutes become some of the most compelling witnessed this awards season. It would pain my heart to not see at least one of these two be richly rewarded for a pair of the most multi-faceted performances this slate of films have given us. Odom, brighter and more show-stopping, while Ben-Adir provides a more measured, arduous inhabitation, and between them, One Night lands its final moments with pitch-perfect verve.
Not every award winning actor can make the jump behind the camera with equal success, but King gets this new evolution of her career off to a very solid, if not always spectacular, start.
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