The Fire Inside review – a sport­ing biog that lacks originality

We must be reach­ing a sat­u­ra­tion point now where there’s at least one under­dog box­ing dra­ma for every human being inhab­it­ing plan­et Earth right now, and with Rachel Morrison’s The Fire Inside, we have one more to add to the pile. Based on a weird­ly under­whelm­ing script from Bar­ry Jenk­ins, it’s a well-mean­ing if inert and sur­prise-neu­tral jour­ney through the young life of female box­ing prodi­gy Cla­res­sa Shields, feis­ti­ly essayed by actor Ryan Destiny.

Set against a back­drop of extreme pover­ty in the deprived city of Flint, Michi­gan, we see Cla­res­sa run­ning miles each day to hang out at a rinky-dink box­ing gym run by local com­mu­ni­ty leader Jason Crutch­field (Bri­an Tyree Hen­ry). The ini­tial hur­dle of allow­ing a girl to come in and fight with the boys is swift­ly dealt with, as Crutch­field straight away sees ​“the fire inside” and decides to take Claris­sa under his wing and ush­er her into the large­ly unchar­tered ter­rain that is female pro­fes­sion­al boxing.

The film hits all the expect­ed beats, from domes­tic strife and eco­nom­ic woe to the actu­al logis­tics of pack­ing this two­some over to Lon­don to com­pete in the 2012 Olympic Games. It’s impact­ful in the way it talks about a gen­er­al dearth of oppor­tu­ni­ties for young women of colour in sport, cul­ture and the job mar­ket, yet it’s deal­ing with too many dif­fer­ent issues for any one thing to real­ly hit home.

The arc that chron­i­cles Claressa’s rise up the ranks ends up being con­text for a more com­pelling sec­ond act in which she is thrown on the scrapheap despite her incred­i­ble, record-break­ing achieve­ments at the Olympics. The film holds up a mir­ror to the world of com­merce and mar­ket­ing, paint­ing an unflat­ter­ing por­trait of an indus­try that is dri­ven by cyn­i­cism, stereo­types and an unwill­ing­ness to break the mould.

Destiny’s per­for­mance in the lead cap­tures the nec­es­sary phys­i­cal­i­ty demand­ed of the role, yet Clarissa’s mode of per­ma-scowl­ing annoy­ance does make the her feel a lit­tle one-note at times. Tyree Hen­ry has a lot more dynam­ic range in his char­ac­ter, and is able appear more appeal­ing by dint of the fact that he pass­es through a range of emo­tions, from eupho­ria at Claressa’s wins to melan­choly at the way she is all-but-ignored by the Amer­i­can public.

This is Morrison’s first film as direc­tor, hav­ing worked pre­vi­ous­ly as a cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er for film­mak­ers like Ryan Coogler and Dee Rees. For rea­sons that seem rather per­plex­ing, this is not a visu­al­ly inter­est­ing film, and every­thing feels as if it has been shot and framed for max­i­mum effi­cien­cy rather than to stand out from the crowd. Jenk­ins’ screen­play, too, while hav­ing a cou­ple of rous­ing mono­logues, doesn’t real­ly con­tain the depth and detail that you see and hear in his own direc­to­r­i­al work. Shields is a worth­while sub­ject and her accom­plish­ments are incred­i­ble, but this film is per­haps one for under­dog sports enthu­si­asts only.