One Night in Miami is both a classic and contemporary film.

Film Fest 919 opened Wednesday night at the new drive-in at Carraway Village with a movie we’ll all be hearing about right through awards season, which culminates with the 2021 Oscars.

Directed by Academy Award-winning actress Regina King, it is an adaptation of the 1964 night in Miami when then-Cassius Clay shocked Sonny Liston for the heavyweight championship at only 22 years of age. Clay, who shortly after changed his name to Muhammad Ali, sort of celebrated with three other historical figures from the 1960s.

They were former football great Jim Brown, the record-breaking runner who retired from the NFL at 29; rhythm and blues singer Sam Cooke, and Malcolm X, the radical Islamic activist until he was murdered in 1965 at 40. They spent most of the night in Malcolm X’s cheap motel room debating their lives as black men.

Ali became a legendary figure way beyond boxing; Brown has been a lifelong activist since his short movie career; and Cooke the singer-songwriter who had the biggest awakening even though he too was shot only 10 months after the night. Cooke is played by Leslie Odom Jr, who also starred on stage and screen in Hamilton.

I won’t spoil it any more for you, but the timing of the movie could not be any more poignant with today’s racial unrest that goes far deeper than the label of Black Lives Matter. It has two more screenings here, October 18 (at Silverspot) and October 28, before opening in theaters across the country.

Regina King, who won her Oscar for Supporting Actress in If Beale Street Could Talk, was born seven years after that One Night in Miami but obviously is a great student of history and black culture. She makes what would seem like a slow plotline into a gripping tale of famous men facing their own upbringings and the impact they could make on race in America moving forward.

The controversial and extremist Malcolm X had a short time left with these friends, of whom only Brown is still alive, but his influence on them all in this adaption is unmistakable.

 

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