Critic Reviews

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.

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.

“The Big Cigar” makes no claims to be any kind of definitive biopic; it’s simply a well-made and, yes, fictionalized telling of the Hollywood-adjacent chapter in Newton’s life.

The Big Cigar is thoroughly entertaining, but rather than fully honoring this under-told piece of history, it feels like things have been manipulated into the form of a digestible six-episode miniseries.

Despite our reservations about the storytelling in The Big Cigar, we were impressed by Holland’s turn as Huey P. Newton. That alone is enough to watch this fast-moving series.

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.

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.

Enjoyably watchable if occasionally tonally uncertain.

Though “The Big Cigar” is a sprawling, supercharged time capsule, one that fascinatingly blends a specific moment in Hollywood with the politically fraught reality of what was happening outside of dreamland—this series lacks an unflinching edge.

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.