The Fire Inside

If you’ve seen the trailer for The Fire Inside, you’ve seen all of the film that’s worth watching. Yet here this near two-hour bore is, hogging valuable screen space during awards season and making concerned viewers want to stage an intervention for Oscar-winning screenwriter Barry Jenkins.

In her feature directorial debut, gifted cinematographer Rachel Morrison (Black Panther; Dope) and Jenkins barely try to justify a feature-length runtime in their fact-based tale of Olympic boxer Claressa “T-Rex” Shields (a tragically committed Ryan Destiny).

Apparently banking on audiences never having seen a sports drama, the filmmakers suggest Ressa’s life in Flint, Michigan, is one giant cliché. From her deadbeat mother Jackie (Olunike Adeliyi) and prodigal father Clarence (Adam Clark, Coach Carter) who only returns when he smells a payday, to her loyal volunteer coach Jason (Brian Tyree Henry) and sparring partner/love interest Lil’ Zay (Idrissa Sanogo), Ressa seems to be living out others’ existences rather than forging her own path.

Perhaps that's the underlying message of this incredulously lazy script from Jenkins, who never attempts to tell this national (and arguably global) hero's story with anything resembling creativity. Struggling to pad the story, he harps on silly drama involving Ressa’s grudge against Jason for his absence at an overseas tournament and fails to maximize the struggle to monetarily capitalize on Ressa’s fame — the film’s most compelling element outside of the ring.

Fortunately, Morrison puts her visual skills to good use in the sufficiently exciting boxing scenes that, like the rest of The Fire Inside, nonetheless add little to the subgenre. But hopefully she and Jenkins got big paychecks to phone in this project and can now afford to make as many passion projects as they desire.

Grade: C-minus. Rated PG-13. Now playing at Regal Biltmore Grande

(Photo: Sabrina Lantos)