'Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist' Turns Kevin Hart Into a Dad Show Hero
I, too, am a grown little man
Dads like Muhammad Ali. Even if they didn’t agree with his politics, they liked him as a person for his charisma and his integrity when standing up for what he believed in — and for how extraordinary an athlete he was. (He also became a less politicized figure over time as he got sicker, which softened his image). The Greatest is a supporting character in Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist, but Peacock’s limited series, which just released its finale, would be a Dad Show even if Muhammad Ali had nothing to do with it. Fight Night is a Dad Show because it’s a straightforward, well-made crime drama about men who are good at their jobs.
Fight Night is set in Atlanta in 1970 around Muhammad Ali’s comeback fight against Jerry Quarry. Every rich and powerful Black person in America comes to the city for the fight. Gordon “Chicken Man” Williams (Kevin Hart), a small-time but highly entrepreneurial local hustler, plans an afterparty and invites the regional crime bosses of the “Black Mafia,” in the hopes of making a name for himself. Unfortunately, the party gets robbed by some stick-up artists, and the bosses think Chicken Man is behind it. So he has to team up with straitlaced J.D. Hudson (Don Cheadle), the first Black detective in the Atlanta P.D., to protect his family and clear his name.
There are some major people in this show, including Samuel L. Jackson, Taraji P. Henson, and Terence Howard, who’s very insane in real life but is still a good actor. But this is Kevin Hart’s show. I haven’t seen all of his dramatic performances, but of the ones I’ve seen, this is his best. Kevin Hart is an interesting cultural figure whose popularity as a comedian I don’t fully understand. His persona is that he’s a rich and famous guy with problems that only Kanye West and LeBron James can relate to. His ball-busting sense of humor seems to come from a place of anger, not camaraderie. He seems like a very unpleasant person. But he’s undeniably one of the hardest-working people in Hollywood, so I gotta give him that. And I guess he’s improved as an actor, because he holds his own against Cheadle and Henson and even Samuel L. The last dramatic series I watched him in, Netflix’s True Story, he was stiff and one-note playing a character that was based on himself. But maybe he just needed a better-drawn character. He and Chicken Man are a lot alike. They’re fast-talking, highly ambitious antiheroes. And Fight Night is a well-written show. Creator Shaye Ogbonna taps into a rich thematic vein by putting this story against the backdrop of Atlanta’s rise as America’s contemporary Black Mecca. Chicken Man represents a Southern Black entrepreneurial class that was fighting to be taken seriously by the white and Black establishments. And in the long run, he won.
If you like ‘70s crime dramas, Fight Night is a fun entry to the genre of ersatz ones. It’s better than Don Cheadle’s other ‘70s crime limited series this year, his directorial effort The Big Cigar, which didn’t tell the right story about Huey P. Newton. Both shows use snap zooms and split screens to signify ‘70s style, but Don Cheadle is a less experienced director than Craig Brewer, who reunites here with Howard and Henson from Hustle and Flow and Empire and Jackson from Black Snake Moan. He’s been doing this type of neo-Blaxploitation for 20 years and somehow pulling it off even though he’s white, probably because he’s very sincere about it.
I enjoyed Fight Night. It’s not a show that’s going to endure in the public consciousness, but it’s a very solid crime drama. And it’s a hit by Peacock standards, because it made the Nielsen chart. If they want to keep making shows like this, I will keep paying for a subscription (my free one is about to run out).
-My review of Bad Monkey’s season finale went up on Episodic Medium last night. Really fun show. I’ll be doing a Substack video with Episodic Medium founder Myles McNutt discussing Bad Monkey tomorrow at 3 p.m. ET, if you’d like to watch.
-My review of Peacock’s horror series Teacup went up on TV Guide today. Another fun show. Like if The Thing was set in the woods.
Weirdly, I actually liked Hart in True Story (though Wesley Snipes stole that show in the end). Can't stand his stand up (I tried multiple times), but most of the interviews I saw with him, he came off as a person who could be fun to hang out with.
To me, even the trailer of Fight Night was a bit exhausting, but I can totally believe it's a solid drama. I'm just not particularly a big fan of 70s crime stories so I think I'm gonna skip this one.