The Fire Inside is a sports biopic with the nerve to ask, “What happens after the win?” It’s a simple shift in emphasis, but an unexpectedly transformative one, which forces us to reckon with how shortsighted we can be in our assumptions that victory creates a certain kind of immortality. Its subject is Olympic boxer Claressa “T-Rex” Shields (Ryan Destiny), from Flint, Michigan, who became the first American woman to win a gold medal in boxing, at the 2012 London Games. She was only 17.
But medals, alone, aren’t enough to live on. Athletes need endorsements. And Shields walked away from her triumph into the jaws of misogyny and, crucially, misogynoir, as a young Black woman who valued her strength and didn’t care to lie for the cameras. “I like to beat people up,” the film’s Shields responds when asked why she wants to box. Sponsors don’t want to hear that kind of authenticity. They’re after modelesque beach volleyball players, with winsome smiles and perfect manners. So no one came to call. Shields was left adrift.
