Audiences looking for the acting masterclass of TIFF this year need look no further. One Night in Miami..., the debut feature from Regina King, finds four men meticulously succeeding in a very hard script. And the whole thing unfolds over the course of one night in a hotel room.
Slick lines and slicker delivery help keep things moving in a great script with a few elongated pitfalls. But the stylish final product is a lot of fun to watch mainly thanks to a main cast whose commitment turns a film about a party into an eventually fun party.
The film’s story takes place in an alternate history, imagining a meeting between four leaders of black history in early 1964: Malcom X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Cassius Clay (Canada’s Eli Goree), Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) and Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge).
The central quartet of actors are all magnificent. Goree’s Cassius Clay is the best of the four, truly inhaling the body and mind of Clay as he becomes Muhammed Ali. Ben-Adir and Odom Jr. have the most scenes together, clashing and bonding over their unique approaches to pursuing justice and love in their versions of black America.
Hodge’s Jim Brown, however, has the most memorable scene early on, and he’s the one we should’ve seen just a bit more from. When all four of them ping-pong off each other, something remarkable happens.
One Night in Miami truly comes alive in the verbal sparring between the four lead characters. They alone make up nearly 90% of all dialogue in the film, and most scenes are a combination of just these four. Thankfully, there’s lot of time for them to dish zippy lines and impress their passionate
Playwright Kemp Powers pens the screenplay based on his own play of the same title. Given how much of the film is set inside Malcolm X’s hotel room, the story’s structure feels more like a play than film.
But actor-in-directorial-debut King has crafted grand settings and swift changes between settings, topics and conflicts amidst the titular “one night” to keep things interesting. Once you accept half the movie is the four men talking politics and history in a hotel room, you’ll enjoy it much more.
Sam Cooke says at one point, “Everyone says they want a piece of the pie. I want the damn recipe.” All four men are experiencing this struggle, but their communal exploration makes for a mostly entertaining movie about the black experience.
More specifically, these are the continual perils of the black experience from the eyes of celebrities in an equally dangerous time. It’s frightening how the line between artist or athlete to that of an activist is just as thin today as it was sixty years ago.
These are exactly the conversations that should still be going on, and more importantly, should be advancing the possibility of what excellence can advocate for. What does success represent? And how do we achieve it?
King’s debut feature is dense and meticulously detailed. And the payoff is a dynamite show of four actors mastering their craft to show us a possibility. Of those I’ve seen so dar, TIFF’s Gala Presentations seem to have a theme this year of hope in possible futures for the Americas and the world at large.
After yesterday’s American Utopia showed us the future, this film dreams of the past that can still empower us today.
One Night in Miami...
8 out of 10
1hr 54mins. Drama.
Directed by Regina King.
Starring Kingsley Ben-Adir, Eli Goree, Leslie Odom Jr. and Aldis Hodge.
Streaming on TIFF’s Bell Digital Cinema on Sunday September 13th and playing at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on Wednesday September 16th, with tickets available online here. General release later this year with Amazon Studios.
This review is part of Oakville News 12-part series covering the 45th Toronto International Film Festival. Read here about watching all 57 movies at this year’s TIFF.
A full roundup of reviews from all movies at TIFF so far can be read here.
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