Ryan Destiny & Brian Tyree Henry are absolute lightning in a bottle in this. They both bring such a lived-in grit, vulnerability, and prowess to their performances — two of the best of the year for sure. I was enamored with how their bond of adversity and mentorship ebbs and flows. Cried a few times. Though the script/storytelling doesn’t quite rise above cliché sports biopic melodrama (you can tell this is a Barry Jenkins script all day), there’s some wonderful needle-drops, tightly sequenced fight scenes that aren't full of jump-cuts and shaky-cam but rather precise kinetic movements that kept me engaged with the action. I really appreciated the tonal shift mid-way through the film, as it accentuates Claressa’s personal-struggles as one not only contained to her social-reality, but the greater systemic realities of sports, capitalism, and gender disparity. Recommended.