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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
9
Mixed:
10
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
May 16, 2024
Season 1 Review:
The Big Cigar works on multiple levels. It’s a retro action thriller. It’s a fictional representation of American history and the biography of a countercultural giant. It’s a showcase for Nivola, Boone, and especially Holland, who balances Huey’s intelligence, courage, and post-traumatic paranoia. There’s humor in the culture clash between revolutionaries and Hollywood types.
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The Daily BeastMay 16, 2024
Season 1 Review:
The Big Cigar, unsurprisingly, adds another striking performance to Holland’s inspiring oeuvre. Most impressive is how Cheadle commands tone, with a jazziness to the dialogue and editing that can inject fun and humor but also lend appropriate weight to the moments where Newton describes the feeling that death waits for him around every corner.
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IndieWireMay 17, 2024
Season 1 Review:
Yes, focusing on one part of his life (escaping to Cuba) helps the series from becoming a bloated, predictable slog, but jumping between timelines is exhausting, and major life moments are too often reduced to lip service. .... There’s one impeccable element: André Holland. Perfectly cast and delivering a performance filled with equal parts fear, anger, and tenderness.
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May 16, 2024
Season 1 Review:
There are intriguing snippets in all these various timelines, but the shuttling back and forth deprives The Big Cigar from the nimble cadence it requires to keep up with Holland’s narration, Newton’s story, and the vibrant ’70s aesthetic directors like Don Cheadle bring to the series.
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RogerEbert.comMay 17, 2024
The GuardianMay 17, 2024
Season 1 Review:
By giving Schneider co-lead billing in what should have been the Huey P Newton story, The Big Cigar has supplied a dispiriting answer to its own still pertinent question: no, Hollywood can’t be trusted to authentically tell the stories of Black radicals; the compulsion to centre whiteness is just too strong.
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The TelegraphMay 16, 2024
Season 1 Review:
When digging into the inner-workings of Newton’s mind and exploring the in-fighting and rival ambitions that ultimately undermined the Black Panthers, we are taken to the heart of a key period of recent history. So much so that Newton’s flight to Cuba and Schneider’s part in it feel like an unwelcome guest at the party.
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May 16, 2024
Season 1 Review:
The series isn’t dumb; if anything, it has too much on its mind. But in attempting to tell so many stories about so many people, and with its ceaseless rocketing around in time, it loses focus and force. .... But Holland shifts gears smoothly through these twists and turns. .... He makes him someone you want to learn more about, the best thing an actor playing a real person can do.
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May 16, 2024
Season 1 Review:
The series consistently leaves him circling the same frustrations, rehashing the same arguments with Gwen, as well as the same worries about his role in the revolution. Newton was a man hell-bent on driving the world forward, but The Big Cigar spends most of its time running in place.
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May 16, 2024
Season 1 Review:
The Big Cigar, unfortunately, seems most interested in Huey the icon, to the point where it all but ignores any details of the murder of which he was accused. (Nor, in the closing titles about what happened to everyone after the events of the series, does it get into the allegations that the Panthers later attempted to murder a witness in the case to prevent her from testifying against Newton.) Such messiness comes across as incidental to the magic-of-the-movies hooey that suffuses The Big Cigar.
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