Ro's Recz

One Night in Miami is a movie that recently came out on Amazon Prime; although it is based on a true story, a lot of the details from the night are unknown, so the writers took a lot of liberty to fill in these details.

One Night in Miami takes place a day after Muhammad Ali’s first fight against Sonny Liston. This is when Ali became the heavyweight champion of the world, and the day before he became a converted Muslim (and changed his name from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali). One Night in Miami talks about the post fight celebration that took place in a hotel room between Ali, Malcolm X, Jim Brown, and Sam Cooke.

At the time, Ali was on his way to becoming one of the most famous boxers in the world, Malcolm X was still involved with the Nation of Islam (although his connection was fading), Jim Brown was the most famous football player in the world, and Sam Cooke was a famous musician/singer. Although the actual conversations that take place in One Night in Miami are made up, the writers apparently did a lot of research to accurately portray the characters and what they might have said.

What is interesting about One Night in Miami is that all of the characters have different ways that they are trying to improve the lives of African Americans. Even though they are trying to achieve the same goal (and are of similar social status), they go about trying to achieve it in various ways.

Overall, I thought One Night in Miami was a very interesting movie, and reading this article by Smithsonian Magazine really helped to clear up a lot of things that occurred during the movie. Also, reading the article helped me to differentiate what from the movie was true, and which parts were false or significantly embellished.