The Stream: Sports biopics are basically all the same.

The Big Screen: Ryan Destiny and Brian Tyree Henry give powerful and engaging performances.

The Final Bill: The lead performances help this sports biopic transcend the pitfalls of its basic genre.

– Trip Fontaine
Director: Rachel Morrison
Writers: Barry Jenkins
Stars: Ryan Destiny, Brian Tyree Henry, Olunike Adeliyi,
Genre: Biography, Drama, Sport
Rating: PG-13 for some strong language, thematic elements, and brief suggestive material
Runtime: 1 hour 44 minutes
Production Companies: MGM, PASTEL, Michael De Luca Productions
Platform: In theaters December 25, 2024
Notable Trailers: Nickel Boys, A Minecraft Movie

Hey, Streamers! It’s the New Year, but we still had some releases from Christmas Day that we had to catch up on. One of those movies was The Fire Inside. It is an inspirational sports drama about, Claressa Shields (Ryan Destiny), the first American woman to win a gold medal at the Olympics in boxing. In Flint, Michigan, Claressa is a tough, young girl, who wants to learn to box and look out for her family. Jason Crutchfield (Brian Tyree Henry) volunteers to take Claressa under his wing as coach and mentor and trains her to get to the Olympics. Claressa and Jason hope that success on the world stage will bring notoriety and money, but things don’t come easy. Training montages and deadbeat parental hijinks ensue.

The Fire Inside is a basic sports biopic about an otherwise compelling subject. Despite the talent behind the camera in the director, Rachel Morrison, and the screenwriter, Barry Jenkins, this movie hits all the necessary beats for this kind of movie, where triumph is inevitable. There are the training montages. There is the parent who doesn’t believe in her and the parent who just wants to ride the train of success. There is the meteoric rise to success and the stumbles along the way. Fortunately, this movie does spend some time focusing on what happens after success. In fact, that ends up being the most compelling part – expectation vs. reality. Unfortunately, this part also feels truncated and meandering.

Moreover, Ryan Destiny and Brian Tyree Henry make this otherwise pretty basic sports biopic engaging. Ryan Destiny truly brings the fire from inside of herself and lets it burn up the screen. She is a fierce actress, who breathes life into Claressa. You believe that this young woman could be a champion boxer. Brian Tyree Henry is great as usual. He’s exactly the kind of inspirational coach you’d want without being corny. These two actors are the biggest reason to watch this movie because otherwise you could just find real clips of Claressa Shields fighting at the Olympics to see what all the fuss is about.

Ultimately, The Fire Inside is a fine sports biopic. It tells the same inspirational sports story that you’d expect, but it does venture into new territory that provides an engaging angle. The lead actors are the reason this movie rises above the inevitable cliches of a story like this. This movie is uplifting and entertaining enough for a trek to the theater for an afternoon matinee with a bowl of popcorn.