Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Film myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.The original, and more evocative, title of boxing drama The Fire Inside was Flint Strong, after Flint, Michigan, home of its real-life heroine, record-breaking Olympic champion Claressa “T-Rex” Shields. Flint certainly makes its desolate presence felt here: having suffered shutdowns in its General Motors plants, then severe pollution in its water supply, the city has become emblematic of corporate disregard for America’s working class. So when Shields’s coach Jason Crutchfield (Brian Tyree Henry) tells her that she is fighting not just for medals but for Flint’s civic honour, it carries a definite ring.Shields begins as a fiercely driven teenager from a troubled family background; under Crutchfield’s committed tutelage, she achieves glory, but then endures bitter frustration. Through its first half, The Fire Inside seems to follow a standard affirmational biopic agenda, though its generic nature is lifted by Ryan Destiny’s vital evocation of Shields’s teenage intensity, and by Henry’s ability to lift the most routine pep-talk dialogue.But the film really comes alive with Shields’s return to the grinding everyday, as the promised media glory and endorsement deals fail to materialise. The sports business, she finds, is not interested in female athletes. Her naive self-presentation doesn’t help: she can’t understand why it doesn’t look good when she announces, “I like to beat people up.”The film is scripted by Barry Jenkins, director of Moonlight, The Underground Railroad and recent big-budget sidestep Mufasa: The Lion King. Rachel Morrison, who shot Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station and Black Panther, makes an impressive feature directorial debut; cinematographer Rina Yang contributes flashes of showbiz spectacle for the big fights, but hard-bitten, low-key realism dominates. What happens in the ring is ferocious enough, but it’s around the kitchen sink that the drama really hots up.★★★☆☆In UK cinemas from February 7 and on US streaming platforms now
