Your support helps us to tell the story At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.These are observations that serve, in a way, as an instant giveaway as to the identity of the […]
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But medals, alone, aren’t enough to live on. Athletes need endorsements. And Shields walked away from her triumph into the jaws of misogyny and, crucially, misogynoir, as a young Black woman who valued her strength and didn’t care to lie for the cameras. “I like to beat people up,” the film’s Shields responds when asked why she wants to box. Sponsors don’t want to hear that kind of authenticity. They’re after modelesque beach volleyball players, with winsome smiles and perfect manners. So no one came to call. Shields was left adrift.The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.Dir: Rachel Morrison. Starring: Ryan Destiny, Brian Tyree Henry, Oluniké Adeliyi, De’Adre Aziza, and Adam Clark. Cert 12A, 109 minsFrom reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.In fact, The Fire Inside owes a lot to how beautifully Henry and Destiny counterbalance each other. Crutchfield thrives in quiet observation, in how he immediately understands and adapts to the way Shields nervously leaps back when he swoops in for a congratulatory hug. Shields, meanwhile, is caught up in the internal battle between ordinary teen wants and needs, and the near-machine engine drive of her ambitions. At one point, she’s frustrated by the fact that, yes, she won, but that she should have won by a bigger margin. Crutchfield coaxes out Shields’s tenderness; Shields ignites Crutchfield’s passion for the sport. The Fire Inside embraces the whole spectrum, of what’s true in life and in cinema. The Fire Inside is a sports biopic with the nerve to ask, “What happens after the win?” It’s a simple shift in emphasis, but an unexpectedly transformative one, which forces us to reckon with how shortsighted we can be in our assumptions that victory creates a certain kind of immortality. Its subject is Olympic boxer Claressa “T-Rex” Shields (Ryan Destiny), from Flint, Michigan, who became the first American woman to win a gold medal in boxing, at the 2012 London Games. She was only 17. We’re first introduced to Shields as a hardened little girl, who views boxing as her armour, as a way to steel herself for when she has to come home to a dirty kitchen, the hungry mouths of her younger siblings, and the mother (Oluniké Adeliyi’s Jackie) who loves in thorny, complicated ways. She turns up to the neighbourhood gym where former boxer Jason Crutchfield (Brian Tyree Henry) now mentors promising young talents for free, as a way to escape his day job installing cables. He’s never even considered the idea a girl might want to box. Still, she impresses him, and he takes her on as a student, as his heart melts in that tender, unshowy way that only Henry can achieve in his performances.
