THE FIRE INSIDE is the true story of 2012 U.S. Olympic boxer Claressa Shields. It’s a standard sports biopic for sixty-five minutes before writer Berry Jenkins (MOONLIGHT) wisely turns his attention to talk about the hardships of Flint, MI, and women athletes. Those hardships and the knockout performances by Brian Tyree Henry and Ryan Destiny elevate THE FIRE INSIDE to be better than expected.
For a film about boxing, THE FIRE INSIDE strangely leaves much of Sheilds’s story off the screen. The creators decide to focus on her early career and journey to the Olympics instead of the later stages of it. There’s enough here that Barry Jenkins could’ve easily written this as a TV miniseries, and audiences would’ve seen the full Shields story. Instead, we are served the first part of it, while the rest is told in predictable biopic end credits with words describing what comes next.
I enjoyed THE FIRE INSIDE for its unique look into the life of Shields. However, after the end credits rolled, I couldn’t help wanting more.
It’s available in theaters on Christmas Day.