The Fire Inside

There have been quite a few films based on true stories this year and they were all incredibly depressing, at least for the most part. I suppose no one chooses to adapt happy stories, because what's the fun in that? But among the sad stories of the world, there have been some truly touching and uplifting ones, including The Fire Inside.

We know I love stories about women overcoming their circumstances. Claressa Shields was a young girl that wanted to box, but the gym in town didn’t want to train girls. But she was determined and she wouldn’t go away. She was finally given a chance, and when she was she proved that she had what it took.

The Fire Inside was definitely an appropriate title, this girl has a spark, she’s got drive, she’s got heart.

The thesis statement of the film was set up really well within the first ten minutes. This little girl was pretty much on her own, absent and neglectful mom. She really just wanted to be somewhere, she decided that she wanted to box and didn’t stop until she made it happen.

The bulk of the film is her as a teenager. Still looking after herself, and her siblings. She does most of her training on her own, and she gets herself to nationals. Nationals also serves and Olympic trials qualifiers. At this point she is only 16 and she practically raised herself, and yes that was all implied but I think we should have seen more of it. If you are going to do a profile on someone’s real life then you need to actually show their real life.

I think there was some opportunity for some more internal exploration here that they just didn’t do. The thing with true, inspiring stories like this is that some filmmakers will treat the situation like it's the inspiring part, and not the person which is a problem. The screenwriters omitted so much about her story, the film is about an American winning a boxing medal at the olympics, something we hadn’t really done at the time. When it SHOULD have been about Claressa herself. There was nothing about the fact that her dad was a boxer and the reason that she was interested in the sport, nothing about the fact that her grandmother was the one that encouraged her to do what she was passionate about past gender boundaries. These are important things that make up who she is, things that jump started her journey. We really shouldn’t have moved past her childhood so quickly.

Now we did get some stuff with her mom being shit, though there is no real way to verify how accurate that is. Claressa didn’t seem to talk about it in any interviews, and I couldn’t find any verification on the personal stuff. So it could be completely fabricated, could be 100% true or anything in between.

Her coach takes her in, which is easily the best thing for her general wellbeing and the future of her boxing. This is clearly the only adult that she can count on.

She goes to the Olympic trials, alone. I might have a problem with the pacing. I think the important thing to remember when handling someone’s real life story is that you don’t actually have to include every major accomplishment. I think the inspiring part of this story is that she got herself to the Olympics, not necessarily that she kicked ass while she was there. And though that is important, it's not what makes Claressa an incredible person. So the fact that we really breezed right passed all of the actual hardship she had to overcome just made the story feel a little shallow. Now I understand that we are walking a line, you also don’t want any main character to be going through hardship after hardship. It gets repetitive and there is a bad habit in Hollywood of taking the real stories of specifically black people and basically making torture porn out of them. Like the only way black people can be successful is if they suffer first, and I don’t need that from this movie but I did need more of her emotions. I didn’t even really need to see each struggle but I needed to see more of her internal struggle. This could have been accomplished with simply more moments alone, reactive shots, creative cinematography. There were a million ways to do this without actually showing her suffer but they chose not to put any effort or creativity into this.

Also Claressa has an insane boxing record. It's something like 65 wins and 5 losses which is crazy. And I think that we could have done more to see how she got there. Her strength and determination is what is inspiring. Want to see the obstacles to her training. The best scenes were the ones that took place between the trials and the actual Olympics.

Now her dad was in the movie and he was shown as an obstacle for her but I think it would have been more impactful to see his role in her origin story.

I liked the movie and I think Claressa Shields was a great pick for the subject of a film like this. I just think that the filmmakers really didn’t have a good handle on the story that they wanted to tell. Was it about Claressa’s Olympic wins? Or was it about her and her journey? They desperately wanted to tell both stories, but they just didn’t balance it well. And because of their inability to choose it just felt like something was missing. I needed more heart and emotion. Ryan Destiny was incredible, and Claressa was somewhat involved in the making of the movie. Now this probably explains the lack of insight into her childhood, you don’t necessarily relive that in front of millions of people. Also you could argue that boxing was the most important thing to her and therefore the film did a great job because it showcased her heart the most. I’m just very opinionated and I think there were certain things that could have been done better. That said, I give it an overall 8/10 and do think that Ryan is gonna be up for some nominations this awards season.