Movie Review - The Fight (2020)

Four years ago, in the run-up to the 2016 Presidential election, a political documentary was released that was powerful and topical, commenting on the times and events as they were happening or very immediately in their wake. That documentary was produced and directed by Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg. It was also edited by Eli B. Despres. That documentary was Weiner (2016) and it was one of my favorite films of that year. Four years after that, in the run-up to the 2020 Presidential election, Kriegman, Steinberg and Despres have again given us a political documentary that is powerful and topical. Kriegman, Steinberg and Despres lucked out in following a politician whose scandal came back to bite him and we watched his failing and his fall, almost in real time. They're not as focused or as deeply entrenched, yet one feels they could have been. Instead of following one person operating in the political space, here they follow four who are operating more in the legal space, but adjacent to the political one.

The film starts in January 2017 with audio of President Donald Trump's oath of office, during his inauguration. We then get news footage of the protests following what was called Trump's travel ban against Muslims or people coming from predominantly Muslim countries. The American Civil Liberties Union or the ACLU filed a lawsuit to fight this travel ban. The ACLU is obviously the nonprofit organization, consisting of lawyers and lobbyists, that fights to protect the Constitutional rights and freedoms of every person in the United States, even those of white supremacists. It's stated that as of the release of this documentary, the ACLU has filed over 160 lawsuits against the Trump administration. This documentary details four of them.

Lee Gelernt is the first lawyer we meet. He's the one working on the travel ban case. He works at the ACLU's main office in New York City. The reason he's working on the travel ban case is because he's part of the Immigrants' Rights Project at the ACLU. Various issues at the ACLU have their own project dedicated to them and Gelernt is part of the Immigrants' Rights Project. We don't learn much more about him, other than he's white and probably in his late 40's or early 50's.

In addition to the travel ban, Gelernt also works on a case called Ms. L v. ICE. The case involves the family separation policy instituted by the Trump administration, regarding people who come into the country over the southern border, even those seeking asylum. If those people have children, those children have been ripped from their parents. Mothers like Ms. L have had their children ripped away from them. It's been exemplified with the image of kids in cages without their families. Of all the cases, this one is probably the most emotional, as it's probably the most egregious of all the cases.

Brigitte Amiri is the second lawyer we meet. We don't get much biographical information about her, but she does work on reproductive rights. Her current case is Garza v. Hargan, or what's referred to as Azar v. Garza. The case involved a teenage girl in Texas who was an undocumented immigrant staying at a shelter at a refugee settlement. The immigrant girl was trying to get an abortion. However, the director of the shelter refused to let her go have that abortion. The ACLU sued the Secretary of Health and Human Services, first Eric Hargan and then Alex Azar.

What's particularly notable about this case, other than the precedent it sent, is that Brett Kavanaugh was a judge in the appeals court in DC that tried to stop the abortion. He worked on this exact case in October 2017, a full year before he would be confirmed on the U.S. Supreme Court after Justice Anthony Kennedy retired, which gives one an example of who Trump has been putting into the courts. This is especially relevant, given the week before Halloween 2020, a week before the election, Trump put another judge on the Supreme Court, that of Amy Coney Barrett.

Dale Ho is the third lawyer we meet. We learn that he's married. He has a wife and two children. We see scenes of him at home interacting with his family. There is a question of how much he's focusing on his work, perhaps to the detriment of his family. It's not a huge issue that's made in this film though. Ho is the director of the Voting Rights Project at the ACLU. His current case is Dept. of Commerce v. New York.  His case involved the Trump administration telling the U.S. Census Bureau to add a citizenship question.

The problem is that this case is a complicated case, which requires a deeper dive than this documentary provides. We're given the broad strokes of why it's important, but the film doesn't really have the time nor the inclination to go into the greater implications. The film also can't be bothered with explaining the decisions once one is handed down. All we get are Ho's reactions, as well as the reactions of others around him. Without knowing the context, it's emotions that are felt in the moment but ring hollow afterwards. What's engaging is that Ho has to argue in front of the Supreme Court, which seems as if it's his first time doing so. He's nervous and anxious, so much so that he stumbles during his practice sessions. The film becomes like a sports film where one is watching an athlete train for an important competition, except here it's lawyers preparing, not to go onto a basketball court but the highest courts in the land.

Chase Strangio is the fourth lawyer we meet. Chase is involved with the LGBT & HIV Project. We get that Strangio is a transgender man himself. We get an adorable scene of him trying to work from what looks like his apartment, while a very energetic child is running all around him. It's not sure if the child is his own, a relative or one he's just babysitting. But, Strangio is assisting with the case called Stone v. Trump, which is about the ban on transgender people from serving in the military based on a series of tweets that President Trump posted in the summer of 2017.

Again, the film gives us enough of the broad strokes to understand why this is important, but it doesn't dig into the issue as much as one would want. A better film to get the ultimate impact of this issue would be Transmilitary (2018), which aired on TV. This film from Kriegman, Steinberg and Despres is more about showing us the breadth and the bombardment of the issues that the Trump administration has brought to various minorities in this country.

Rated PG-13 for strong language and brief violence.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 38 mins.

Available on Hulu.