The review of Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist was written by Kevin Hart, Samuel L. Jackson and Don Cheadle

Realizing that the city of Atlanta is the real hero of Peacock’s new crime drama Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist rather than any of the colorful gangsters, thugs, and small-time criminals from the series takes some time. And that the main burglary is actually more about prestige and international recognition than it is about the purported financial gain.

Maybe Chicken Man, played by Kevin Hart, is the most heroic character of Fight Night. This isn’t because Chicken Man is a smart or noble character; rather, Chicken Man is a representation of Atlanta, a hustler with lofty goals who overcomes a dark past by looking beyond himself.

Full credit to Shaye Ogbonna for crafting a comedic thriller with the core of an American Studies graduate thesis, based on the podcast of the same name. Not to be ironic, but Fight Night has a ridiculously deep ensemble cast that is generally well-deployed, and it is thinking about some real issues. In an eight-hour run time that is padded by at least two hours and struggles to maintain any momentum, these elements typically make up for the numerous structural and tonal issues.

Atlanta is a small-time city in 1970 that is still recovering from the shame of its Dixie heritage. With the aid of his mistress and Girl Friday Vivian (Taraji P.), Chicken Man, an ex-con, is operating a numbers game. Henson), well aware that a statewide lottery is about to usurp his racket. A strange parallel exists between this subplot and Lady in the Lake on Apple TV+, which is set in Baltimore. ).

Chicken Man’s opportunity and his hometown arrive at the same time in a show that is, in their own words, “based on some shit that really happened.”. “.

Muhammad Ali, who remains controversial due to his disapproval of the Vietnam War, will make his first fight in three years happen in Atlanta, much to the dismay of local law enforcement and Georgia’s segregationist governor (Dexter Darden, who captures the champ’s cadences but not his physicality). In line with Chicken Man’s vision to help turn the town into a Black Las Vegas, the event attracts controversy and a plethora of notable African Americans, initially primarily for his personal gain. He offers to host a celebration in honor of Samuel L. Jackson after learning that the top Black organized crime figures in the nation will be visiting the area. Frank Moten, Jackson’s notorious figure. Unaware that there was previously a party scheduled and preparations made to rob it, Chicken Man is going to make an easy target.

For Detective J, the heist and the growing number of victims make life more difficult. D. Despite having mixed feelings about the boxer, Don Cheadle’s character Hudson was hired as one of the city’s first Black police officers to guard Ali.

Before long, godfathers from all over the nation, including Terrence Howard’s Jersey-based Cadillac, are attempting to kill Chicken Man because he is on the front page of local newspapers for having organized a crime he did not commit. The real thieves are beginning to realize that they too have a bounty placed on their heads for what appeared to be a low-risk smash-and-grab. Who will prevail in the fight for Atlanta’s future and who will still be around when the dust settles?

Precision is a crucial element in a successful heist and a compelling heist narrative, and Fight Night is an incredibly cumbersome task. There isn’t enough character development for a five-season cable drama, but there is enough story for a two-hour film, and attempts to bridge that gap are never successful. In addition to the genre-standard and recurring structural changes, the show frequently introduces new characters and then has to reacquaint viewers with old ones. It all began with a meaningless in medias res opening and included numerous flashback revelations that revealed “It was a plan all along!”.

Star power alone buys you more time to eventually give the characters in Jackson, Howard, Hart, Henson, and Cheadle’s cast backstories. All of the A-list performers have enough material to give performances that are extremely entertaining or fully realized.

Perhaps Hart’s most brilliant semi-dramatic piece to date, it combines fast-talking comedy with progressively somber reflection, all encased in wide-collared suits and an impeccable Afro. Jackson nails his silver-tongued tough-guy persona with menacing ease, even though there are moments when it seems like he’s largely drawing from his old Tarantino playbook—just without the flowery dialogue. It is an absolute, if all too rare, pleasure to watch Jackson and Cheadle share the screen when they bring forth the most complex character in the story. Even when the screenplays revert to tired threats of sexual assault, Henson upholds Vivian’s dignity and discovers a sassiness that is more subtle and less comical than in her Emmy-nominated role in Empire.

However, the show introduces us to all of the participants in the actual job, who are mainly played by relative unknowns. There is also the heist, where it is impossible to identify the characters from the previous episode because they are all wearing masks. The next episode introduces us to them once more, and in a later installment, they are all reintroduced after spending some time in an abandoned nightclub. By the end, each new piece of information reduces the suspense and emotional investment to zero, even though I started to identify them and become interested in one or two of their outcomes (there are seven or eight robbers before bad things start happening).

I understand Ogbonna’s and the team’s desire to ensure that these positions weren’t tacked on. Whether they are the overseas instruments of the military-industrial complex or the enigmatic high rollers who ordered the plot, they are the systematically oppressed pawns. It’s fascinating to watch the writers struggle with whether or not to show specific sympathy for them (some of them are pretty bad guys) or just general human empathy. Furthermore, each one is masterfully performed, with notable performances from Melvin Gregg, Myles Bullock, Sam Adegoke, and others.

However, it’s also easy to imagine editors and audiences eager to return to Samuel L. Jackson. For example, you can sense the writers’ desire to give more depth to characters who might otherwise be background characters; see also Artrece Johnson, who excels as Chicken Man’s wife Faye, and Teresa Celeste, who plays the generally undefined Maxine. Think of Don Cheadle mingling with Muhammad Ali or Michael Jackson brandishing a gun while cursing.

The stars are both a boon and a curse.

The tone wavers due to a lack of concentration as well. A delicacy that Fight Night seldom exhibits is needed if one wants violence to waver between being ridiculous and important. A performer such as Jackson can still make cheap tension and empty violence based on the possibility of rape hum, but it’s exploitative in a story that isn’t sure if it wants to go in that direction.

A master of the grindhouse aesthetic, Craig Brewer directed the first two and the final two chapters. NBC’s iconic peacock logo and worn film stock are reminiscent of a B-movie during the opening credits. A large portion of the middle of the season is more visually unremarkable, but Brewer’s early episodes use split screens and zooms to capture that late 1960s, early 1970s flavor. It serves as a reminder of how much simpler it would have been for Fight Night to maintain a certain level of consistency as a feature film or perhaps a six-part series. In the middle of the season, I lost interest in a few different places.

I kept watching because of the actors there. Although the show is inconsistent, the world that the writers create offers both established characters and up-and-coming talent—I don’t want to overlook the striking work of actors like Michael James Shaw, Ron Reaco Lee, and Rockmond Dunbar—opportunities to shine.