When I first clicked ‘play’ to watch ‘They Fight’ and began seeing André Holland in a do-rag and prison scrubs begging for his freedom, my first reaction was to click ‘stop’ and find something else to watch. I did not want to watch another Black man in a stereotypical role. The next day I came back and continued to watch it with an underlying sense of dismay.
Here’s the set-up: An ex-con/ex-boxing coach with an ex-lover wanders into the Congress Park Recreational Center and finds redemption.
I really wanted to like this film but it was hard to see past all the tropes that appear from the very beginning. André Holland(Walter) and Wendell Pierce(Slim) were as brilliant as always. Unfortunately, their impeccable performances were in the context of appealing to the “White gaze” – a term coined by Toni Morrison describing how Black art is altered to fit the perceptions of non-melanated folks.
It’s important to note the source material for this project is a documentary of the same title and a Washington Post article that chronicles the story of a self-taught boxing coach who uses the sweet science to connect with his stepson and eventually impacts the young men of Southeast DC. Some of those key elements that made this story so compelling were eliminated from the HULU original film.
It feels like Andrew Renzi, who directed the documentary, tried to squeeze as much out of this story as possible. He and ANDSCAPE had an agenda based on self-interest. They wanted to make it a more commercial project and they did so by relying on offensive, recycled stereotypes and not the kind of plot points that make a movie like this successful.
As a comparison, I am reminded of ‘The Karate Kid’. The one-on-one scenes between ‘Mr. Miyagi’ and ‘Daniel Laruso’ are what made it successful. There was very little of that in ‘They Fight’. Most of ‘Walter’s’ interactions with the boys centered around boxing, which is ironic since the title of the Washington Post article that spurred all of this is ‘It Ain’t All About Boxing’. There was a lot of chanting and such but not those wisdom nuggets that audiences respond to. Most of the mentoring was between ‘Slim’ and ‘Walter’. Which is where the White gaze comes in.
Most of the first act(and then some) focuses on ‘Walter’ transitioning out of incarceration. Although this is part of ‘Walter’s’ journey, we’ve already seen this in the previous incarnations of his story. They should have given us something different than the predictable “Black man released from prison and finds redemption” story.
Technically it was lacking as well. It took 27 minutes before I realized they were in a rec center in DC. There was some rewinding and looking at license plates to get a sense of context. Eventually, there was a shot of the outside entrance of the Congress Park Recreation Center.
Too many inconsistencies in the plot made it tiresome. Three writers contributed to this script and it feels like they literally couldn’t get their stories straight. Inconsistent dialogue made the story choppy and diminished the sympathetic nature of the characters.
Seeing one too many single moms not married to the absent fathers of their sons served to confirm my suspicion that the producers/director tried to exploit some of the dysfunctional relationships in the Black community with talented actors making it all seem authentic.
I counted three training montages. This unofficially transforms it into a sports drama which brings it close to having an identity crisis. In the third act, the younger actors portraying the boxers broke the fourth wall, looking into the camera while shadow boxing. This bit of cinematography was unnecessary and increased the Velveeta flavor of the film.
The one bright spot early on was a scene of ‘Peanut’ and ‘Walter’. After being “jumped”, ‘Walter’ tells ‘Peanut’, “Always fight back. Even if you lose.” I thought this was a precursor to more poignant gems relevant in and outside the ring. It was not. A big disappointment.
As I stated earlier, I really wanted to like this film. It is frustrating when Black filmmakers make these types of movies under the guise of “authentic” or “real” storytelling. It’s not too dissimilar from the music moguls pushing a particular type of rap albums.
If you are a discerning movie watcher and/or an African-American with a modicum of Black consciousness, this film isn’t for you. It would be better to watch the documentary ‘They Fight’ to see the impactful, emotional story of Walter Manigan and the young men of DC’s Ward 8.
