Sheldon Candis’ well-intentioned but deeply frustrating “They Fight,” now on Disney+ and Hulu, opens with a close-up of one of the best actors of his generation: André Holland. The star of “The Knick,” “Moonlight,” and “High Flying Bird” is before a parole board, introducing us to a character who has already been knocked down to the mat, being counted out by life. He reveals that his older son has died, and that he was behind bars when it happened. He needs to be paroled not just for himself but for his remaining son, so he can be raised the right way. From the jump, Holland is doing remarkable work with shallow exposition, adding just the right glances and catches in his breath to imbue the character with truth. And then Candis layers in an aggressively manipulative score and cuts to a profile instead. It’s a case study in what the movie will do repeatedly: Drown its best assets in manipulative filmmaking, resulting in an overcrowded and ineffective drama that doesn’t trust its viewers or its stars.
Holland plays Walt Milligan, who gets paroled and gently works his way back into everyday life, finding his way to a youth boxing program run by the terse but gentle Slim (Wendell Pierce, genuine as always). As he quietly tries to reconnect with his infant son and his mother, Ketta (Samira Wiley), he becomes a trainer to a bullied kid named Peanut (Anthony B. Jenkins), who becomes part of a national championship run with another youth boxer named Quincey (Toissant Francois Battiste). Candis co-writes with Andrew Renzi, who directed the 2018 documentary of the same name. I haven’t seen Renzi’s film, but based on the brief glimpses of real people in the end credits, I imagine it’s more engrossing. It almost has to be.
For this narrative version, Candis and Renzi layer their manipulations in an egregious, self-defeating manner. It’s a cavalcade of shallow subplots that includes bullying, cancer, drug addiction, youth violence, and more, all in around 90 minutes. It’s funny to move from a show like “Lucky” that has about 60 minutes of plot in seven episodes of television to a movie that could easily support an entire season with its various dramas that feel so underdeveloped that only their emotional manipulations remain. So many problems with film and TV in the 2020s come down to this issue of the wrong length.
However, there’s reason to believe that the TV series version of “They Fight” wouldn’t have been much better because of how often Candis smothers his talented cast in shallow filmmaking. Whether it’s the overheated score, use of slo-mo, or simply the film’s network TV color palette, “They Fight” constantly fights against (sorry) what its strength should be: André Holland. Even through the film’s TV-movie aesthetic, one can see the smart choices made by the nuanced actor, who gives Walt backstory and interiority that are significantly more moving than the film’s bare-bones script and amateur filmmaking. Pierce and Wiley are also effective in minor beats, but it’s Holland who can do more with a look at himself in the mirror than the film could possibly do with a monologue.
By the time that “They Fight” reaches its sports movie climax, there’s just not enough reason to care about the result. It’s clear that the winner isn’t essential to appreciating this story—it’s one of those sports movies that preaches the benefits of the process more than the champion—but the film simply isn’t subtle enough to work as a character study for either its fighters or its coaches. Even the final fight succumbs to poor choreography, which is the kind of thing one wouldn’t notice if the movie had worked emotionally to that point. It simply never lands any of those punches.
