{"id":806340,"date":"2026-07-16T20:08:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T20:08:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/806340\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T20:08:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T20:08:15","slug":"they-fight-review-sensitive-boxing-drama-picks-the-wrong-battles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/806340\/","title":{"rendered":"‘They Fight’ Review: Sensitive Boxing Drama Picks the Wrong Battles"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sheldon Canis\u2019 new boxing drama \u201cThey Fight\u201d is about children fighting in a boxing tournament. It\u2019s about adults fighting their own demons. It\u2019s about a recreational center fighting city budget cuts. But the most dramatic fight is between the story and its storytellers. So, as the anonymous poet who wrote the tagline for \u201cAVP: Alien vs. Predator\u201d once said: \u201cWhoever wins \u2026 we lose.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andr\u00e9 Holland<\/a>, perfectly cast as literally anyone (he is just always reliably that good), stars as Walt Manigan, an ex-boxing coach on parole after three-and-a-half years in prison. He\u2019s determined to get a job, stay clean, and earn his way back into the life of the woman he loves, Ketta (Samira Wiley), and their very young son.<\/p>\n

Walt has nowhere to go, nowhere to sleep, and nowhere to work, so he spends a lot of time at a local rec center, using their computer to apply for jobs. Slim (Wendell Pierce) runs the place. He recognizes Walt and he nudges him back into coaching local kids, especially Peanut (Anthony B. Jenkins) and Quincey (Toussaint Francois Battiste). Hopefully the children will grow into disciplined go-getters. Walt may even find himself along the way.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey Fight\u201d frames itself as Walt\u2019s personal journey to redemption, and Holland can play that. He wears regrets like they\u2019re goosebumps, which can only go away with warmth and comfort, neither of which he currently has. Walt says he lost his love for boxing, although \u201cThey Fight\u201d is vague about why he turned his back on the sport. He resists his own urge to be a mentor and instead tries to work in construction, before sciatic nerve pain overwhelms him. He can manage that with medication but he\u2019s afraid of falling back into addiction, so every time he takes a pill, \u201cThey Fight\u201d pauses to watch him closely, as though he might relapse.<\/p>\n

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The filmmakers do this kind of thing a lot, using familiar, clear cinematic language to tell a story with tension and melodrama. But \u201cThey Fight\u201d has no interest in playing along. No matter how many times we see Walt taking his meds, he never abuses them or seeks out stronger stuff. That\u2019s not a subplot, it\u2019s the threat of a subplot. And it\u2019s an empty threat.<\/p>\n

Not that we want anything bad to happen to Walt. He\u2019s a decent guy, whatever mistakes he\u2019s made, and he\u2019s determined to redeem himself. So determined that he successfully redeems himself about two-thirds of the way through the film, so \u201cThey Fight\u201d needs to scramble to put together a third act. The focus shifts from Walt to his boxers, Peanut and Quincey, who seem destined to fight each other at the climactic tournament. That\u2019s a promising development. Or it would be if it was developed.<\/p>\n

Peanut and Quincey, played by impressive young actors, have no beef with each other. They\u2019re good friends. There\u2019s no indication that fighting each other means something to them. They\u2019ll both try to win, only one of them can, and they\u2019ll probably hug it out afterwards. Neither boxer has a stronger motivation to compete, neither has anything seriously on the line. Sheldon Canis\u2019 film tries, by employing high intensity montages, to imply Quincey is working out his aggression after a terrible personal loss, but it never seems like he\u2019s losing his way or has to be stopped. No matter how hard the cinematography and editing insists that the big fight means something, it\u2019s never convincing.<\/p>\n

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The thing is, \u201cThey Fight\u201d is full of convincing moments. Whenever the characters stop and talk, about their crushes on girls, about their family drama, it\u2019s a captivating film. Whenever Pierce spouts wise words about life, or hard work, or honesty, or any other important subject, \u201cThey Fight\u201d feels forced. When he\u2019s talking about how he thinks noodles taste better when you eat them with chopsticks, that feels real.<\/p>\n

The most powerful moment in \u201cThey Fight\u201d isn\u2019t when Holland stands before his students and gives a big speech about his past and their future, inspiring them to compete. The movie wants that to be the most powerful moment, so the dramatic music drowns the actor\u2019s dialogue, as if the bigness of the moment was more important than anything he actually says. That doesn\u2019t amplify the scene. It just makes the scene hard to follow.<\/p>\n

No, the most powerful moment is when Quincey, at the worst moment of his life, while Walt is trying to keep him interested in boxing, tells his coach \u201cI give zero f\u2013ks about your pep talk.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s as though Quincey was finally speaking for all of \u201cThey Fight\u2019s\u201d characters, trying to convince the storytellers that even though this film has boxing in it, it shouldn\u2019t conform to the usual boxing movie rules. \u201cThey Fight\u201d is better whenever it ignores the standard sports clich\u00e9s and focuses on real people and their emotions, not its barebones plot.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey Fight\u201d is based on a documentary, and it shows. When it\u2019s about something real it\u2019s about something beautiful, but we already have the real version, so this remake never makes a convincing case for its own existence. Why watch the self-conflicted, contrived version of the story when you can watch the actual people, living actual lives, with actual consequences? A great movie about these characters already exists. Why fight it?<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"ride-or-die-hannah-waddingham-octavia-spencer-prime-video\"\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sheldon Canis\u2019 new boxing drama \u201cThey Fight\u201d is about children fighting in a boxing tournament. It\u2019s about adults…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":806341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[137476,703,49,48,4700,82,261603],"class_list":["post-806340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-andre-holland","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-hulu","tag-sports","tag-they-fight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/806341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}