The ingredients that make up the new limited series Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist will be all too familiar to anyone who’s paying attention to this TV moment. The eight-episode series is inspired by a true-crime podcast that itself was an unearthing of a shocking robbery connected to Muhammad Ali’s return to boxing in 1970. It’s available on Peacock, one of a host of streaming services continuing to battle for audience attention. It boasts a recognizable ensemble cast, as well as a well-known director and producer. It starts in medias res to potentially amplify the tension and make the audience wonder how its antihero lead could wind up with a gun in his face. And it is, as is almost a requirement with new shows, at least two or three episodes too long—to the point of raising the question of why the series exists at all. The story it tells is indeed fascinating, but at heart, its intent is to prove that A-list actor and stand-up Kevin Hart has a secret well of dramatic talent. And in that respect, it’s a miss.
Fight Night is centered around two events: first, Ali getting back in the ring in Atlanta in the fall of 1970 and the related media attention surrounding his refusal to be drafted into military service in the Vietnam War; and second, a heist that takes place at a house party held during Ali’s fight by Gordon “Chicken Man” Williams (Hart), a hustler so desperate to move up the ranks of the Southern underworld that he’s holding the party in honor of the so-called “Black Godfather,” Frank Moten (Samuel L. Jackson). Once the robbery is complete, Williams winds up being accused as its mastermind. The Chicken Man (and yes, people often refer to him that way) eventually has to convince not only Frank and his fellow criminals but also straight-arrow cop J.D. Hudson (Don Cheadle) that for all his small-time crimes, he’s innocent of this specific heist.
With a cast including Cheadle and Jackson, as well as Taraji P. Henson and Terrence Howard, Fight Night is never anything less than watchable, but the material from creator Shaye Ogonna and his fellow writers rarely meets the low bar of meeting such talented actors at their base level of quality. A mid-series interrogation between Hudson and Moten is compelling, less because their at-odds lifestyles are being upended by Hudson’s criminal investigation and more because…well, it’s Don Cheadle and Samuel L. Jackson in a room together, and how could that not be reasonably intriguing? The connections among the ensemble are unavoidable, whether it’s inadvertent Marvel tie-ins (not just Nick Fury going head-to-head against James Rhodes, but the original Rhodes and the updated Rhodes in the same series) to reunions for Howard and Jackson with series director Craig Brewer of Hustle & Flow and Black Snake Moan.
But the writing gives these actors and Hart very little, such as scratch-the-surface depictions of the discrimination and racism that Hudson felt from white men within the Atlanta Police Department, or Williams trying to placate both his wife and his business partner/would-be paramour (Henson) and failing at each because of his insatiable and fruitless drive to be respected. A lot of Fight Night feels akin to watching kids play dress-up, with the cast sporting almost cartoonishly stereotyped period clothing and hairstyles. And supporting players like Dexter Darden as Ali are saddled with such facile writing that it’s just slightly removed from parody. In spite of Darden’s reasonably enjoyable performance, the other characters come close to calling Ali by his full name just so we know who he’s portraying.
The other problem, which is intermittent throughout the eight episodes, occurs when Hart is asked to do more than seem desperately out of his depth. (Williams as a character is often depicted that way on purpose.) The examples of comedians revealing unexpected abilities to be dramatic are plenty, but if Hart has such abilities, he’s yet to find the right project in which to showcase them. (And he did produce Fight Night, to be clear.) Frankly, it doesn’t help that he’s working alongside such titans as Cheadle and Jackson, who are far better than the material deserves and out-act Hart anytime they share the screen. Fight Night almost benefits from Hart’s limited dramatic range, especially once Williams and Hudson become begrudging partners in figuring out who truly masterminded the heist.
Fight Night owes a debt to a lot of different sources, from the podcast that inspired it to mismatched buddy comedies to even Pulp Fiction. (It’s not just that Jackson is once again playing a tough guy, but Frank has a habit of getting a bit religious when he wields a weapon, which cannot help but call to mind the image of Jules quoting scripture.) Anyone unfamiliar with either Ali’s life or the specifics of the story at the heart of the podcast may indeed be fascinated by the idea of a big-money robbery tied tangentially to the Greatest, occurring in a city on the cusp of becoming a dominant source of American business. But even if the actual crime is compelling, and even when producer Will Packer can congregate such a solid ensemble, the end result of Fight Night is also like so many other streaming series: a story that could’ve just been a standard movie and one that would’ve vastly benefitted from a more capable leading man.
Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist premieres September 5 on Peacock
