The ’70s boxing drama packs a killer punch

“Fight Night” really comes into its own with its blaxpoitation references and production design: it looks funky, uses split-screen to great effect, and impresses with its costumes and sets. It sounds good too, with a funk and soul soundtrack that’s both atmospheric and infectious. This is a show that is very well done.

But producers are aware that good looks alone aren’t enough to sustain a show over eight episodes, and so Fight Night is packed with larger-than-life characters and performances. Hart is perfect as the arch chancellor with the big mouth; Don Cheadle is as strong as ever as JD Hudson, one of the first black detectives in the city’s desegregated police force who is tired of always being on the wrong side; and Samuel L. Jackson plays Samuel L. Jackson in every respect, but is nevertheless perfectly cast as gangland boss Frank “Black Godfather” Moten.

It’s an all-star cast in which almost everyone gets their chance to shine, with the notable exception of Dexter Darden as Ali himself – he’s not the subject here, but when the self-proclaimed “Greatest” steps onto the screen, you should still be excited. Darden is in no way imposing enough.

With so many big names in so many big fur coats on screen at the same time, there’s a danger that “Fight Night” could become a parody, like something out of Austen Powers. That this isn’t the case is largely due to Cheadle’s storyline as Hudson. While author Shaye Ogbonna (“The Penguin”) recognizes the instant appeal of the crime story here – was it a production? Did Chicken Man Roast His New Bosses? – He never allows himself to be seduced by the swagger of the 1970s underworld.

Instead, via Hudson, he skillfully weaves together the story of how Atlanta became America’s “black mecca” in the 1970s. Ambition and entrepreneurship can easily be classified as criminality, they say…it just depends on who makes the laws.