Oscar winning actress Regina King makes her directorial debut in One Night in Miami.
Adapted from a stage play. It imagines a meeting in a hotel after Cassius Clay's (Eli Goree) defeat of Sonny Liston in 1964 when he was crowned world heavyweight champion.
Clay and his friends Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr) and Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir) get together to celebrate, joke, argue and debate about being black in 1960s America.
The pre credit sequence concentrates on each of these men. It shows the causal and non casual racism some of them encounter.
The crux of the movie is Clay deciding to become a Muslim and join the Nation of Islam which also entails changing his name.
Meanwhile Malcolm X is considering his future with the Nation of Islam which is causing tensions within the group.
Jim Brown wants to leave football and become an actor. It is better for his knees.
Cooke has realised that there is money to be made if white groups such as The Rolling Stones have big hits with the songs he has written.
Malcolm X though is angry with Cooke for not taking a strong political stance. He reminds Cooke that black people are being killed everyday. Others tell Malcolm that he is being too hard on Cooke.
Deep down this is a political movie, chiming with the Black Lives Matter debate.
The stagebound nature of this movie is hard to ignore. It also takes a while to get going but becomes compelling when Malcolm X and Sam Cooke clash.
The ensemble cast do bounce off well from each other. The best performance for me was by Leslie Odom Jr, especially his singing voice.
It has to be noted that within a year after this fictionalised meeting that both Malcolm X and Sam Cooke would be dead.
Adapted from a stage play. It imagines a meeting in a hotel after Cassius Clay's (Eli Goree) defeat of Sonny Liston in 1964 when he was crowned world heavyweight champion.
Clay and his friends Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr) and Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir) get together to celebrate, joke, argue and debate about being black in 1960s America.
The pre credit sequence concentrates on each of these men. It shows the causal and non casual racism some of them encounter.
The crux of the movie is Clay deciding to become a Muslim and join the Nation of Islam which also entails changing his name.
Meanwhile Malcolm X is considering his future with the Nation of Islam which is causing tensions within the group.
Jim Brown wants to leave football and become an actor. It is better for his knees.
Cooke has realised that there is money to be made if white groups such as The Rolling Stones have big hits with the songs he has written.
Malcolm X though is angry with Cooke for not taking a strong political stance. He reminds Cooke that black people are being killed everyday. Others tell Malcolm that he is being too hard on Cooke.
Deep down this is a political movie, chiming with the Black Lives Matter debate.
The stagebound nature of this movie is hard to ignore. It also takes a while to get going but becomes compelling when Malcolm X and Sam Cooke clash.
The ensemble cast do bounce off well from each other. The best performance for me was by Leslie Odom Jr, especially his singing voice.
It has to be noted that within a year after this fictionalised meeting that both Malcolm X and Sam Cooke would be dead.