The Best Movie of the New Year

“One Night in Miami” is a dazzling word display, based on a true meeting between Malcolm X, Jim Brown, Sam Cooke and Cassius Clay — on the night in February 1964 when the 22-year-old boxer beat Sonny Liston to become world champ (and would soon become Muhammad Ali). With a screenplay by Kemp Powers based on his play and directed by the great actress Regina King, “One Night in Miami” is more than a harmonic clash and convergence of four American icons — it’s a deeply moving love letter to African American men. The film portrays Malcolm X as a vulnerable and haunted man, instead of the steely orator who inspired a new generation of black men and women and struck fear into white America.

British actor Kingsley Ben-Adir turns in the film’s standout performance as Malcolm, who was facing the combined wrath of the Nation of Islam leaders, from whom he was breaking at the time, and J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI — and this malevolent alliance would assassinate him the following year. I loved reading in today’s San Francisco Chronicle how Ben-Adir — during his research for his role — tapped into Malcolm’s bravery and anguish: “The most important conversation I came across was Malcolm with (comedian and activist) Dick Gregory that around this time he felt weak, he felt hollow and that no one knew the torments that he went through.”

The movie ends with this prophetic quote from Malcolm: “It is a time for martyrs now, and if I am to be one, it will be for the cause of brotherhood. That's the only thing that can save this country."

The film just premiered on Amazon’s Prime Video.