News + Views, TV

Tandy Culpepper Reviews Fight Night –Kevin Hart, Taraji P. Henson, Don Cheadle, and Samuel L. Jackson Score a Knockout in Fight Night

Shaye Obgonna’s limited series Fright Night: The Million Dollar Heist is adapted from a 2020 podcast by the same. This fictional account of a factual event takes poetic license here and there, but the bones of this project largely hew to the straight and narrow.

We’ve seen quasi-thrillers before that verge on black comedy. Fight Night crosses the line and doesn’t shy away from providing the viewer the occasional guilty gasp: Did that just happen?

The gist of the story: The boxer Muhammad Ali hasn’t been in the ring in three years due to his stance on serving in Vietnam. It’s October of 1970. Ali has been invited to Atlanta to attempt a comeback.

On the evening of the fight, there’s a party, and along with an assortment of other guests, a fearsome group of mob bosses from major cities around the country have been invited. But there’s a fly in the ointment: A mixed bag of thieves intent on a quick payday hold up the guests – including the underworld d figures. Left holding the bag is the party’s host, known as Chicken Man, an incompetent loser if ever there were one. And Chicken Man is clueless.

This series is made up of an incomparable cast led by Kevin Hart as the bumbling Chicken Man, Taraji P. Henson as Chicken Man’s mistress, Don Cheadle as the tenacious detective tasked with solving the crime, and Samuel L. Jackson as the menacing numero uno mob boss.

Why watch? Several reasons. Kevin Hart gives the series a healthy dose of heart as well as much-needed comic relief. Don Cheadle is well cast as the beleaguered lawman trying to make sense of it all – even as he babysits Chicken Man. Samuel L. Jackson is at his very best here portraying a gangster you definitely wouldn’t want to cross.

Stream Fight Night on Peacock.

Published by Tandy Culpepper

I am a veteran broadcast journalist. I was an Army brat before my father retired and moved us to the deep South. I'm talkin' Lower Alabama and Northwest Florida, I graduated from Tate High School and got botha Bachelor's degree and Master's in Teaching English from the University of West Florida, I taught English at Escambia County High School for two years before getting my m's in Speech Pathology and Audiology from Auburn University. Following graduation, I did a 180 degree turn and moved to Birmingham where I began ny broadcasting career at WBIQ, Channel 10. There I was host of a weekly primetime half-hour TV program called Alabama Lifestyles. A year later, I began a stint as a television weathercaster and public affairs host. A year later, I moved to West Palm Beach, Florida and became bureau chief at WPTV, the CBS affiliate. Two years later, I moved to Greensboro, North Carolina where I became co-host of a morng show called AM Carolina. The next year, I moved cross-country and became co-host and story producer at KTVN-TV in Reno, Nevada. I also became the medical reporter for the news department. Three years later, I moved to Louisville, Kentucky and became host and producer of a morning show called today in WAVE Country at WAVE-TV, Channel 3, the NBC affiliate. Following three years there, I moved to Los Angeles and became senior correspondent at the Turner Entertainment Reportn, an internationally-syndicated entertainment entertainment news service owned by CNN. I went back to school afterwards and got an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland, a suburb of Baltimore. Oh, yes. I won a hundred thousand dollars on the 100 Thousand Dollar Pyramid, then hosted by Dick Clark.

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