Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA
It’s not every day you get to be heavyweight champion of the world—for a professional sportsman it’s a once in a lifetime event, at least the first time is… In 1964, at the tender age of 22, boxing legend Cassius Clay (soon thereafter known as Muhammad Ali) ascended to the pinnacle of his chosen sport.
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David C. Nichols – LA Times
The pull of history and considerable topicality sells “One Night in Miami…” at Rogue Machine. Although this well appointed dramedy about what might have gone down in the Hampton House hotel the night that Cassius Clay became world heavyweight champion slightly overdoes the 20/20 hindsight, that doesn’t stop it from grabbing our imaginations.
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Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly
Although rooted in a historic event, Kemp Powers’ period piece about the meeting of Sam Cooke, Jim Brown, Malcolm X and Cassius Clay is less about these gentlemen per se than it is about the struggle of African-American men in general to deal with the ubiquitous racism that continually challenges their manhood.
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Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly
Kemp Powers’ One Night in Miami takes a semi-biographical, satirical look at idealists and the toll taken by their ideals when they enter the body politic. Here, that body is represented by a Miami motel room in 1964, after upstart 22-year-old boxer Cassius Clay (Matt Jones) has just won the heavyweight title from Sonny Liston.
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Les Spindle – Frontiers L.A.
A hotel room meeting among world-heavyweight boxing champ Cassius Clay, the late Islamic civil rights leader Malcolm X, football superstar Jim Brown and the late rock singer-songwriter-producer Sam Cooke sounds like it might have been a cataclysmic clash of titans—or at least a hell of an evening.
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