One Night in Miami... is a 2020 Historical Fiction drama directed by Regina King and written by Kemp Powers, based on his play of the same title.
It tells of the night after Cassius Clay (Eli Goree) beat Sonny Liston to win the Heavyweight boxing championship. He decides to celebrate at a hotel with his spiritual advisor Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir) and his friends, the NFL star Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) and singer Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.). Over the course of the evening, these four Black icons debate their careers, lives, and roles in the Civil Rights Movement.
The movie was given a limited theatrical release on December 25, 2020 before being made available for streaming on Amazon Prime on January 15, 2021. A trailer can be seen here
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Tropes Associated With One Night in Miami include:
- Affably Evil: Jim's old neighbor, Mr Carlton played by Beau Bridges. He clearly adores and greatly respects Jim and sees him as a surrogate son and lets him know he'll always be there for him and it's clear that every word of it is completely sincere. He's also a racist who doesn't allow black people in his home. The fact that he sees no conflict between those two points is what really infuriates Jim.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Several are exchanged between the cast over the course of the movie:
- Malcolm asks Sam why he has to choose between speaking out in his music or making money to help the Black community by appealing to white audiences if Bob Dylan, "a white boy from Minnesota" with no stake in the cause, was able to release explicitly activist music to great commercial success. Sam reacts by storming out of the room.
- Jim Brown suggests that light-skinned Black people like Malcolm tend to be more likely to be radicalized. He asks Malcolm if he's trying to prove something to white people, or to himself. Malcolm seems more than a little shaken.
- As You Know: A Real Life example, taken from Jim Brown's own autobiography. When we're first introduced to Jim, he has a pleasant conversation with an older white neighbor after returning home, with the neighbor heaping praise on the future Hall of Famer and claiming that Jim can always count on him. However, when Jim offers to help him move some furniture, the neighbor reminds him that he doesn't allow African Americans into his home—and he doesn't say "African Americans"—reminding Jim that his personal accomplishments haven't budged the entrenched racial hierarchy one bit.
- Black Dude Dies First: Lampshaded. When Jim Brown tells Clay that he got a role in a Western, Clay is completely unsurprised to learn that Brown's character dies halfway through the movie.
- Boisterous Bruiser: Clay is the most bombastic of the four and is quite jovial in the boxing ring. Of course, this was famously true in real life.
- Break Them by Talking:
- Clay's endless trash talk is enough to make Liston give up during their fight. It certainly helped that Clay had beaten the crap out of him in the previous round as well.
- Malcolm essentially attempts this with his three famous friends, trying to use rhetoric to convince them to use their platforms and support him, to mixed success.
- Call-Forward: Clay, telling the others about Brown's burgeoning film career, says that he should get into acting, too. Muhammad Ali would indeed have a short career as an actor, playing himself in the 1975 biopic The Greatest, starring in the 1978 TV movie Freedom Road, and leading the short-lived Broadway musical Buck White.
- Category Traitor: Malcolm accuses Sam of trying to be this by watering down his music to reach white audiences. Sam pushes back on this, claiming his artistic and business decisions have all been based around supporting the Black community, and Jim and Cassius likewise suggest that Malcolm went too far.
- Heel: Clay brings up the concept to Malcolm when the latter asks if he would be better served dialing back his trash talk. Specifically, Clay admits to modeling himself after one of the first major heels in professional wrestling, Gorgeous George. When Malcolm asks why he wants to embrace the role of a heel, Clay points out the money people spend to watch George wrestle, hoping he'll be beaten.
- It Will Never Catch On: Malcolm, Cassius, and Jim don't think much about the The Beatles and The Rolling Stones (Band), though Sam, being much more in tune with the business, suspects they will continue to grow in popularity in the States and has already invested in The British Invasion.
- Last-Second Showoff: Angelo Dundee implores Clay to finish his opponent off after dominating the previous rounds, but Clay continues to showboat and ends up taking a potential knockout blow in the face, saved only by the bell.
- Nice to the Waiter: Despite his
Awesome Ego, Clay is very cordial to Malcolm's doorman Jamaal, discussing Islam with him as well as signing an autograph and shaking his hand. - Properly Paranoid: Malcolm is constantly looking over his shoulder at white men trailing him, suspecting them of being FBI agents, and checks the hotel room up and down for bugs. He later sees some of these men speaking with one of his Nation bodyguards, confirming his suspicions of them as well.
- The Quiet One: Jim, reflecting his position as the most neutral out of the four main characters.
- Shirtless Scene: Obviously Cassius gets a few. And so does Malcolm, as he rushes out into the street in his sleep clothes with his family after his house is firebombed, rifle in hand.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: When Malcolm asks Jim why he doesn't convert to the Nation of Islam, Jim says he likes his grandmother's pork chops too much. Later, they ask one of Malcolm's bodyguards if he has any regrets about becoming a Muslim, and he says he misses his grandmother's pork chops.
- Totally Radical: Of sorts. On the rare occasions when the others cause Malcolm to break out of his stoic preacher persona, he yells at them with slang that would have been outdated in 1964. Justified, as he was the oldest of the group and the language he grew up with as a small-time criminal in New York City would have been much different than what the others would have been familiar with.
- We ARE Struggling Together: Arguably the point of the movie. While all four men agree that they have some responsibility to use their talent, wealth, or fame to fight for Black Americans' civil rights, none of them are on the same page regarding the best tactics for doing so or their ultimate goals. Their differences in personality and temperament only make it more difficult for them to work together.
- Wham Line: Mr Carlton politely turning down Jim's offer to help by saying they don't allow black people in the house and using a considerably less PC term while doing so. This comes after an extended polite conversation in which Carlton heaped praise on Jim, telling him he'd brought pride not only to the town but the whole state and saying how he'd always be there for Jim who he clearly sees as being like his own son and says it in a manner which makes clear he's completely sincere. It drives home that all the achievements Jim and the others have racked up hasn't changed race relations in the slightest and even black men as accomplished as they are are still seen as second class citizens even by those close to them.
- The Whitest Black Guy: Malcolm X throws this at Sam Cooke, accusing him of ignoring the civil rights struggle by trying to court white audiences with his smooth, unthreatening music.
