THE STORY – Young Claressa Shields sneaks into a boxing gym, eager to spar with the boys. Local volunteer coach Jason Crutchfield quickly takes her under his wing. Claressa proves fiercely talented but soon Crutchfield must go beyond the duties of a coach to keep her on track as she starts to feel not just the pressure of winning, but also the glare of her beleaguered hometown of Flint, Michigan seeking hope in her resilience.
THE CAST – Ryan Destiny & Brian Tyree Henry
THE TEAM – Rachel Morrison (Director) & Barry Jenkins (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 109 Minutes
Claressa Shields lived quite a life before winning the 2012 Olympic Gold medal in women’s middleweight boxing, and she has lived quite a life since then. While most films would adapt her life leading up to her gold medal, Rachel Morrison’s “The Fire Inside” goes further, devoting its last act to what happened after she won. Sports movies rarely chronicle what happens after the big game, leading most audience members to assume that everyone just lived happily ever after. But the big game was just the beginning for Shields, who won Olympic Gold at just 17 years old. Morrison (the first woman ever nominated for the Best Cinematography Oscar for “Mudbound”) and screenwriter Barry Jenkins (“If Beale Street Could Talk”) know how difficult it is to make a successful career when you belong to a minority group, and together they make “The Fire Inside” a true exploration of what it means to be a champion, in and out of the ring.
Part-time boxing coach Jason Crutchfield (Brian Tyree Henry) said he wouldn’t train girls, but there was something inside young Claressa (Jazmin Headley), who always hung around the boxing gym after her father went to prison, that made him take her on. By the time she became a teenager, Claressa (Ryan Destiny) was one of the best female boxers in the country, having won two Junior Olympic championships and qualified for the U.S. Olympic Trials. She’s talented, but Jason knows exactly what to tell her to help her win. He’s incredibly protective of his prize pupil, constantly reminding her male sparring partner that he’s there to ensure she stays focused on hitting him in the ring, not kissing him outside it. Jason and Claressa are a dynamic duo, but due to administrative red tape and personal cost, Jason can’t go with her to the World Championships, Claressa’s first major international fight, in which she needs to place in the top eight to secure an Olympic berth. She makes it by the skin of her teeth, but her interactions with the suits from U.S. Boxing leave a bad taste in her mouth that doesn’t go away, even after her Olympic Gold in London.
While her father was in prison, her mother struggled to raise three kids, and Claressa often had to step in while going to school and boxing training. When she comes back from London, none of that has changed (except for her father being out of prison, not that he’s much of a help); she’s still a teenager with a precarious home life (Jason and his wife even take her in for a time after her mother kicks her out) and an extra-curricular passion that doesn’t exactly pay the bills. She watches as Olympic Gold medalists like Michael Phelps get luxury endorsement deals and their faces on Wheaties boxes, and people assume she’s getting similar offers or at least some money. Despite her historic win as the first American woman to win an Olympic Gold in boxing, she’s told that sponsors want her to be less aggressive, for her to not talk about beating people up in the ring. None of this makes sense to Claressa, and the more life asks of her, the more desperate she becomes – did she put in all this hard work only to have nothing to show for it?
If you follow boxing or the Olympics, you know where Claressa’s story ends up, but the details in Jenkins’s masterful screenplay keep things compelling even if you know her life story. Running gags like the school lunch ladies preparing special meals for her with “that good protein” get tweaked in the film’s second half to reflect Claressa’s supposed fame and her internal struggles. While Claressa remains somewhat stoic in the first half, preferring to speak with her fists, the Olympic win gives her some sort of confidence, and she speaks up much more in the film’s second half. In a star-making performance, Destiny expertly navigates this shift in Claressa’s demeanor, hitting just as hard with her voice as Claressa does with her fists.
Even with a focus so different from other sports films, “The Fire Inside” isn’t immune from cliché, but many of the beats we’re used to seeing from other sports films appear here in incompletely different contexts. For example, when Claressa has her big blow-up about all the work she has put in and considers quitting because she’s not good enough, it’s not in the lead-up to the big match but about everything afterward. The focus on this part of the story leads to the one flaw in the film’s construction: by breezing through the prep for the Olympics, Claressa’s training doesn’t appear difficult for her, even though it was surely anything but. However, this narrative focus also allows the film’s themes of staying true to yourself and uplifting those around you to shine in a way they wouldn’t have otherwise, bringing so many dirty secrets of the sports world to light. You come away from “The Fire Inside” with not just an appreciation for Claressa Sheilds’s tenacity but for the work all athletes have to put in outside their chosen sport to make a living, especially women and those in non-marquee sports. It also makes you wonder about the mechanisms to help young athletes. We’ve already seen how the pressure wrecked Simone Biles in the 2020 Olympics and the meltdowns that occurred in Women’s Figure Skating at the 2022 Olympics, with teenage athletes subjected to intense media scrutiny. Claressa got lucky in having a strong community around her to lift her when she needed it and watching her pay that forward is a beautiful thing.
Like most sports films, though, “The Fire Inside” shines most when focusing on the relationship between athlete and coach. Henry is a perfect foil for Destiny, as he can take the energy she’s giving and give it back even more forcefully, showing how Jason pushes Claressa to be better both in and out of the ring. Jason gets the biggest crowd-pleasing lines, and Henry knocks every single one out of the part, creating a character you root for just as much as the athlete protagonist. When Jason and Claressa have their genre-mandated big blow-up fight, Henry makes it clear just how much Jason has given up, too, and what a toll it has taken on him to be the best coach, mentor, manager, and father figure he can to Claressa.
In a film that so thrillingly upends expectations, this surprising direction for Jason is one of the most insightful and intriguing, and Henry modulates his performance so well that you feel for him, even when he’s somewhat unfairly blowing up at Claressa, a young woman who’s also struggling. “The Fire Inside” may not offer anything new on a stylistic level to the sports film genre, but the care it takes with its characters and story beyond what we usually see makes it a welcome addition. The fact that it’s also a conventional crowd-pleaser with a huge heart makes it a film that will stick with all those who watch it for years to come.
