Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist

A well-organized script and some fantastic performances makes the expansive story of Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist an engaging, fun show to watch.

gbonna and co-showrunner Jason Horwitch have delivered an engaging, briskly paced series that uses a stacked roster to its full potential.

“Fight Night” features some of the best work its cast has done, possibly excepting Dexter Darden, whose Ali is a caricature. Mr. Cheadle is always good—in fact, great. Mr. Jackson is more understated than usual, and thus enormously effective. .... Chicken Man/Gordon is a good fit for the actor—his relentless energy and con artistry conform to Mr. Hart’s repertoire of actorly gifts.

It's a slow burn that can be patience-trying at times, and it's fair to wonder whether there's really enough here to support eight episodes instead of, say, a single movie. But there's confidence to spare and a real sense that the show knows exactly what it intends to be, without compromise. And whenever the pace slows to a crawl, the actors are there to keep you engaged.

“Fight Night” is funny and violent and not only touches on the blatant racism of that time but has an assured grasp of ’70s styles (the feathered locks of Terence Howard — who plays a member of the mob — are a sight to behold). But it really punches above its weight when Cheadle, Hart, Jackson and Henson are onscreen.

"Fight Night" manages to weave it all together beautifully after its slow start, making it one of the more addictive series this year.

Hudson strikes up a winning, buddy-cop rapport with the Chicken Man, and when the actor finally gets to sit across the table from Jackson, it proves to be a scintillating cop-versus-criminal showdown between two heavyweights of the screen. These inspired pairings help The Million Dollar Heist to turn the podcast’s strange true-crime tale into a compelling character drama that also effectively explores the wider-ranging cultural ramifications of its story.

The story of the robbery and the subsequent investigation makes for rich dramatic material, and with a big-name cast and a sleek, cool, period-piece look, the eight-part Peacock series “Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist” delivers a highly entertaining albeit fictionalized version of events.

As it juggles story lines, and sometimes tones, “Fight Night” starts to wobble. But its abundance of stars we never tire of watching helps it keep its footing.

From the half of the season screened, I found “Fight Night” an engaging crime series that builds on a solid foundation of style and tone, even as its greatest opponent is its own formulaic nature.

The actors kept me watching. The show isn’t consistent, but the world the writers capture consistently gives stars and newcomers and character veterans — I don’t want to leave out vivid work from the likes of Rockmond Dunbar, RonReaco Lee and Michael James Shaw — opportunities to shine.

“Fight Night” flirts with a variety of styles — blaxploitation, police procedural, social drama, the buddy-cop movie — which are successful on their own terms but don’t easily cohere. And as the series gets closer to its conclusion, the plot runs farther and farther from the facts, sacrificing historicity and even plausibility for genre-film excitement and culminating with a sting that catapults matters out of the real and into the ridiculous.

It takes a little too long to get to Cheadle and Hart’s inevitable and ultimately rewarding team up, with the middle episodes lagging as they tread water ahead of the final confrontation. A six-episode order instead of eight might have solved most of this, but the three-episode premiere provides momentum out of the gate.