"Everyone Needs Someone in His Corner"

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What You Need To Know:
THE FIRE INSIDE is superbly written, directed and acted. It has terrific rousing moments of victory as Claressa goes for the gold at the 2012 Olympics. However, it also has heartbreaking moments of personal and professional struggle, and inspiring, heartwarming moments of family and human friendship. Those heartbreaking and heartwarming moments extol Claressa’s hard work, determination, discipline, and heart. However, THE FIRE INSIDE has many light obscenities and more than several strong obscenities and profanities. The movie is also slightly marred by some prideful moments and light political correctness, feminism and revisionist history. So, MOVIEGUIDE® advises extreme caution.
Content:
More Detail:
Sports movies often make for some of the best, most entertaining movies because of the inherit nature of a person, or group of people, achieving success and victory at the most climactic moments of a story. THE FIRE INSIDE offers this in spades, but it also offers something more – a story with profound depth and personal grit, determination, discipline, and heart.
THE FIRE INSIDE tells the story of Olympic boxer Clarissa Shields, focusing on her struggles both inside and outside the ring, from her early training days starting in 2006 to her personal and professional struggles up to and including 2016. THE FIRE INSIDE has terrific, rousing moments of Olympic boxing, heartbreaking moments of personal and professional struggle, and heartwarming moments of family and human friendship, with a strong moral worldview, but it’s marred by lots of foul language and some light prideful moments.
The movie opens in Flint, Michigan in 2006. Claressa Shields, nearly 11, keeps jogging to a nearby boxing gym run by Jason Critchfield, a former professional boxer. However, Jason keeps telling her to go away, saying he only trains boy boxers. However, she keeps showing up at the gym, which is a long run from her home. So, he can’t help but admire and chuckle at her determination and refusal to take no for an answer. So, he gives her a chance and soon seriously begins training her to box.
Cut to six years later, and Claressa is ready to qualify for the Olympic boxing trials in Shanghai, China for the 2012 London Summer Olympics. Under Jason’s great coaching, she qualifies for the trial, but he doesn’t have the money to go to China with her, even though she has a good chance being the prime contender. Her only physical drawback? She has short arms, hence a shorter reach for her punches, but she earns the moniker T-Rex for her ferocious determination in the ring.
Claressa makes the Olympics, but she’s the lowest scorer at the trials because she lost her match against a taller opponent with a longer reach from England. Can Jason find a way to get to the London Olympics to help Claressa win the Gold? And, if she wins, will Claressa get the endorsements that can lift her and her family out of poverty?
THE FIRE INSIDE is superbly written, directed and acted. It has terrific rousing moments of victory as Claressa goes for the gold at the 2012 Olympics. However, it also has heartbreaking moments of personal and professional struggle, and inspiring, heartwarming moments of family and human friendship. Those heartbreaking and heartwarming moments extol Claressa’s hard work, determination, discipline, and heart. At one point, her coach, Jason, tells her she’s got more heart, discipline and determination than anyone in her family. Those heartbreaking and heartwarming moments also have some light political correctness and feminism, but nothing really radical. In fact, the movie clearly shows that Claressa is proud to be an Olympic gold medalist for the United States. For example, in one scene, she and the other American athletes enthusiastically cheer American swimmer Michael Phelps when he wins a Gold Medal in one of his events in London.
All that said, THE FIRE INSIDE has a lot of relatively light foul language and several strong obscenities and profanities. It also has light sexual immorality in two scenes between the teenage Claressa and her boyfriend. THE FIRE INSIDE also has some light political correctness, including some feminism and revisionist history. For example, the movie doesn’t mention Claressa’s Christian conversion and baptism at age 13, or her continued commitment to her faith, which includes praying before every match. Finally, of course, the movie has lots of boxing violence, but none of it is graphic.
All in all, therefore, MOVIEGUIDE® advises extreme caution.
One thing MOVIEGUIDE® really likes about THE FIRE INSIDE, though, is the compassionate support and friendship Claressa receives from her coach, Jason Crutchfield, in the movie. Their relationship is really quite beautiful. It shows that everyone needs someone in his corner. Of course, the movie would have been even better if it had shown more strongly how Jesus is the transcendent and imminent God, who looks out for you, if you accept Him as your personal Savior.