One Night In Miami (2020)

This movie is directed by the talented Regina King, who I last saw in If Beale Street Could Talk. She deftly weaves a story about a range of what talented and succeddful black Americans were thinking and doing in the mid-1960's, and the very sad thing about the whole thing is that it doesn't seem dated at all. There has been very little real progress over the past 50 years in the dangers that black men face. One has only to watch the trial of Devon Chauvin, the police office who killed George Floyd with no greater weapon than his body and his authority. The event the movie is built around took place on February 25, 1964 in Miami Beach, Florida, heavyweight boxing champion Sonny Liston met Cassius Clay in the ring for the first of their two famous bouts. Clay emerged victorious, earning the championship and skyrocketing the career of the man who would later be known as Muhammad Ali. This is a fictionalized account of what happened before and after that fight that day, when Clay (Eli Goree) and his friends Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge), Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) and Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir) got together to chill, debate, argue and celebrate. These men are all celebrities in their own right, but to each other, they’re simply friends and acquaintances unafraid to challenge each other’s views on the present and future of Black America. Malcom X is the most vocal on taking things into their own hands (he was assasinated within a year of this) and most critical of Sam Cooke, who was a financial success rather than a stright up crusader. There is a lot to unpack here, and it is well worth watching.