‘The Fire Inside’ Review: Ryan Destiny Gives a Powerfully Gritty Performance in a True-Life Boxing Drama That’s Like ‘Girlfight’ Meets ‘Air’

“What you think about girls’ boxing?” The man asking that is Jason Crutchfield (Brian Tyree Henry), the coach of a boys’ boxing club in Flint, Michigan. It’s 2012, and five years before he’d allowed one girl to join his club (even though it was against protocol): a coiled 11-year-old scowler named Claressa Shields, played by Jazmin Headley and then, as she grows up, by Ryan Destiny.

Claressa, the heroine of “The Fire Inside,” has the dogged determination to pummel her way into the ring. It’s not as if she talks her way in — Claressa, as we learn, doesn’t say much. She speaks with her fists. And one of the reasons she’s so brilliant at using them is that, by her own admission, she likes to hit people. She’s a bully, and owns it. She’s coming from a place of severe hardship: father behind bars, a selfish, at times mean party-loving single mother (Oluniké Adeliyi) who can’t seem to keep her family out of poverty. Not to mention the no-hope vibe of a depressed community. What everyone is telling Claressa is that the only direction she can punch is sideways.

Related Stories

VIP+

Generative AI Fueling ‘Exponential’ Rise in Celebrity NIL Rip-Offs: Exclusive Data

'Sweetpea' Trailer: Ella Purnell Plays an Unassuming Serial Killer in Sky and Starz's Thriller Series

Jason, the coach, is asking about girls’ boxing because he’s addressing what an alien concept it is, at this point, to most of the world. As moviegoers, of course, we may not feel that way. The concept of girls’ boxing seemed revolutionary back in 2000, when Michelle Rodriguez starred in “Girlfight,” Karyn Kusama’s gripping drama about a troubled Brooklyn high schooler who channels her aggression into the ring. But that was a long time ago, and the story told by “The Fire Inside” is one of victory and fame. In 2012, when she was 17, Claressa Shields, with her nickname of “T-Rex,” became the first American woman to win an Olympic gold medal in boxing. Four years later, she repeated the feat and became the first American woman boxer to win consecutive Olympic titles.

Given her relative youth, we expect a story of ferocity and grit, of the unstoppable rise of a boxer who turns out to be a piston-pounding dynamo. “The Fire Inside” gives us that catharsis; it’s a real rouser. Yet the film is rooted in a sobering grasp of the trauma that can be the flip side of triumph. The arc of the drama is built around an enormous curveball it throws at the audience. And that’s when the movie really gets good.  

“The Fire Inside” is the first feature directed by Rachel Morrison, the celebrated cinematographer who shot “Fruitvale Station,” “Mudbound,” and “Black Panther,” and in this movie what she extends from her signature lensing is a quality of no-frills reality that’s very New Hollywood. Watching “The Fire Inside,” you can taste the sunset coldness of the Flint winter, along with the despairing drabness of Claressa’s home, where there’s never enough in the cupboards. Most of all, you connect to what a surly and daunting personality Claressa is.

It’s not that she’s “dislikable.” It’s that the up-and-coming actor Ryan Destiny does a mesmerizing job of reining in and redirecting her vibrance, so that we can see how Claressa’s spirit has turned in on itself. Claressa is a girl of few words because she knows exactly where her words will get her — not far. The bond she forms with Jason, the coach, is one of respect threaded with antagonism. You may think that Brian Tyree Henry has played this sort of role before — the down-home nobility, the impulse that’s supportive in a disgruntled way. But what he does this time is emotionally bracing. Jason, in glasses and a goatee, is a mild soul who’s in over his head. He’s not a professional; he’s a security guard who moonlights as a coach. And he realizes that the only way he can handle a hurricane like Claressa is to do his best to funnel and guide her energy. Yet she needs him. When she lands a spot at the 2012 Olympic trials in Shanghai, Jason can’t afford to accompany her on his own dime. And his absence throws her.

The sports-movie genre has more or less primed us for one thing: winning. But there’s a galvanizing twist that “The Fire Inside,” as written by Barry Jenkins (“Moonlight”), springs on us. Claressa’s relentlessness in the ring is undeniable. The fight scenes are thrilling, because Ryan Destiny makes you feel the destruction she’s channeling. And when she comes out on top, winning that first gold medal, we feel the catharsis we want to feel, even as we’re thinking, “Wait, the movie is only half over. Where can it go from here?”

A Black teenager rises up from the doldrums of Flint to be an internationally celebrated star of the Olympics. Could there be a downside to that? It is this. Claressa plans to continue her career as a boxer, which she can absolutely do. But part of what she wants is for her success to translate into — wait for it — monetary value. She’s achieved greatness, she’s achieved fame, she has made America proud. So where is her payoff?

Olympic celebrity athletes make money with endorsement deals. But there are none for Claressa. The sponsors walk up to her and then walk away. Why? Because those deals are all about companies peddling an image they believe will appeal, and even in the 2010s, the image of a woman beating the holy hell out of people in the boxing ring is considered officially offputting. “What you think about girls’ boxing?” The corporations that control the purse strings don’t like it.

“The Fire Inside” pivots from being a sports drama to a sports parable of American marketing, like “Air.” But “Air,” of course, wasn’t just a movie about the selling of a shoe. It was about race, about the inner meaning of Michael Jordan’s superstardom, about the value we place on a particular athlete and why. Marketing is one of the metaphysical billboards of our culture; in its capitalist way, it reflects equality and justice. So when Claressa goes on a crusade to become an endorser of products, and to equalize the stipends for women boxers in training for the Olympics, this isn’t just something she’s doing alongside boxing. It’s a form of boxing. She’s pounding her fist into the system, trying to bust it apart. And Ryan Destiny’s performance becomes heroic. We see how that scowl of Claressa’s, her refusal to coddle anyone, and nothing less defiant than that, is the very thing she needs to win this battle.