Review: In thought-provoking 'One Night in Miami,' Regina King shows she's right at home in the director's chair

After watching her in her Emmy-winning role in “Watchmen” and her Oscar-winning performance in “If Beale Street Could Talk” — and now, with her feature directing debut, “One Night in Miami” — I am convinced that Regina King can do anything.

Appoint her Attorney General. Let her quarterback the Jets. Put her on “The Masked Singer.” Whatever it is, she can do it, and brilliantly.

Here, King and screenwriter Kemp Powers (“Soul”), adapting his own stage play, imagine the conversation that occurred before one of the most famous photos of 1964. The photo was taken in a Miami diner, after Muhammad Ali — when he was still using the name Cassius Clay — celebrated taking the heavyweight title in a match against Sonny Liston. Attending this impromptu party were the football icon Jim Brown, the singer Sam Cooke, and the activist Malcolm X.

Before this photo was taken, we find Malcolm (played by Kingsley Ben-Adir) preparing his hotel room to meet the other three men. They think they’re going to a party, but Malcolm has something else in mind: A conversation about how these icons can use their status to further the cause of Black liberation.

Most of Malcolm’s attention is focused on Cooke (played by Leslie Odom Jr.), a popular singer who should, in Malcolm’s view, be using his music to further the cause — not singing sappy love songs like “You Send Me.” Cooke argues back that, as a Black entrepreneur, he’s doing his part for his people, like making sure the Black artists he manages get proper royalties when The Rolling Stones covers one of their songs.

While Brown (Aldis Hodge) looks on with amusement, and talks about his side career of getting into the movies, Malcolm also wants a word with Clay (Eli Goree). Malcolm has been guiding Clay on his path to converting to Islam, but hasn’t told the future Ali that he’s had a falling-out with the leader of the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad.

King maintains the contours of the stage origins of Powers’ story — most of the “action” is confined to Malcolm’s small hotel room, and consists of heartfelt, sometimes contentious, dialogue among the quartet. That’s not a handicap here, and King as a director isn’t afraid to let ideas and words propel the drama. King also expands outside that hotel room, with some visually striking moments, in the boxing ring with Clay or on “The Tonight Show” with Cooke, among others.

King also trusts her actors, and they repay that trust tenfold. Ben-Adir bottles the intellectual intensity of Malcolm X, both as an agitator trying to provoke Cooke and a counselor to Clay in his spiritual journey. Odom (“Hamilton”) gets the showiest role, singing in Cooke’s style but also embodying the showman’s smoothness. Goree captures Clay’s ebullient confidence, and the anger bubbling underneath it. Hodge makes Brown a cool observer, more thoughtful than one expects from a football player.

Together, the four actors bring Powers’ dialogue to full life, guided by King’s light but sure hand, posing big questions about Black identity and reactions to systemic racism. They make “One Night in Miami” an exhilarating, thought-provoking experience that’s as vital now as it was would have been in 1964

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‘One Night in Miami’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, January 8, in select theaters, including Megaplex Valley Fair (West Valley City), Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy), Megaplex at The District (South Jordan) and Megaplex Thanksgiving Point (Lehi); available for streaming starting Friday, January 15, on Netflix. Rated R for language throughout. Running time: 114 minutes.