REVIEW: Conbody vs Everybody [2026]

Rating: NR | Episodes: 5 | Runtime: 60 minutes
Release Date: May 1st, 2026 (USA)
Studio: The Criterion Channel
Director(s): Debra Granik

Same concept, different product.

The stat that begins and ends Debra Granik’s five-part documentary Conbody vs Everybody is insane: six hundred and fifty thousand people return home from prison each year. That’s over half a million men and women being thrust back into a civilization that more than likely forgot they existed and generally has no desire to assist in their reintegration. Because despite the word “corrections,” the prison industrial complex is now a for profit institution dependent on crime.

Anyone reliant upon increased incarceration looks at recidivism rates ranging from twenty percent within one year and fifty percent within five and wants those numbers to go higher because a successful prison to them isn’t one that reforms. No, success to them is an overflow of inmates necessitating tented dorms to accommodate and billion-dollar real estate ventures to build even more complexes. More police. More weaponry. More funerals. More money.

It’s why the work of someone like Coss Marte is important enough to earn the attention of an Oscar-nominated filmmaker like Granik to follow his Conbody venture for eight years. This is a formerly incarcerated, self-proclaimed hustler who leveraged the business acumen of running a two-million-dollar-a-year drug delivery service at nineteen into a prison-style fitness philosophy whose goal is to create community and opportunity for others trying to rebuild their lives.

We watch him right from the start as he works on sales pitches for investors with the help of local mentor programs. We witness the excitement and frustration inherent to having a great enough idea to spark interest and the background check red flag to instantly kill it. And even if he does get lucky enough to find someone willing to take the risk on him, what happens when that backer realizes they are actually taking a risk on Coss’s employees too?

Because it’s not just him and his story about losing seventy pounds in six months by exercising with nothing but his own body weight in a cramped jail cell. It’s about the people he inspired to do the same and follow in his footsteps to use fitness as their salvation in the outside world just like they did on the inside. Sultan Malik, Ray Acosia, Shane Ennover, Derek Drescher, Syretta Wright, Jamal Campbell, Gym Star, and Tommy Morris are all along for the ride.

A lot happens in eight years professionally and personally. Coss is constantly struggling to keep the lights on as fickle landlords let external pressure dictate their decisions. He’s visiting prisons as a mentor himself, reading hundreds of letters from potential trainers using him as their inspiration to hope again, and helping to raise his son Cathanial, assist his brother Chris’s political career, and keep his makeshift family of employees on a path towards success.

So, Granik has a wealth of story threads to follow that both explicitly concern Conbody itself (How about a Saks Fifth Avenue pop-up location?) and just the trials and tribulations inherent to turning a new page despite the odds being so stacked against everyone on-screen. Addiction, gang violence, PTSD, public stigma, and more threaten to derail the hard work and promise each trainer prays will get them through. Those recidivism stats are high for a reason.

If I had one criticism of the series, it’s a lack of keeping us aware of what happens to the Conbody staff. Ray and Sultan eventually just disappear without mention. The same goes for Jamal, Gym, and Tommy. Besides Derek and Syretta still being present at the final post-pandemic outdoor classes shown and Shane getting a brief status update, the absence of any mention of characters who played integral roles towards embodying the central themes seems wrong.

Because we hear it described as a major problem many times throughout these episodes: the invisibility of former inmates. So, why would this project add to that phenomenon regardless of intent? We can assume they all finally got their break and went on to live great lives after Conbody helped get them back on their feet, but we don’t know for sure. What’s stopping us from presuming they didn’t, forcing the film to sanitize its message by avoiding that truth?

Distilling eight years into five hours isn’t an easy task and the results will never be perfect, but I do think an omission of information like that is worth mentioning. Especially since the overall trajectory of Coss’s ambitions carries such a positive energy. Finding out that some of the trainers just couldn’t make it work doesn’t diminish that. It only adds to the complexity of the situation and ensures the issue at-hand is taken more seriously as a topic that needs fixing today.

Give Granik a ton of credit for not shying away from the brokenness of the system, though. The constant roadblocks towards sustainability for Coss despite years of proven stability. The ways in which these men and women must toe the line between fighting for their dignity and diminishing themselves for the powers that be just to survive. The community engagement revealing as much apathy as empathy when it comes to real action above performative exploitation.

It doesn’t matter if Conbody is a gimmick. A lot of customers probably did walk through that door initially wanting the tourist “prison experience” regardless of whether they bought a membership after realizing the workout was legit. Coss admits this fact too during a scene with other activists like the late Michael K. Williams. It’s crucial to hear him say that people can think whatever they want because getting them through that door is all that matters.

It’s only after they’re inside the “jail cell” aerobics room that Coss and his trainers can prove their worth, tell their stories, and change minds. Sure, having random white people cavalierly ask “what were you in for” is demoralizing since it’s generally out of morbid curiosity rather than compassion, but it sparks a needed conversation. And the dialogue that follows ultimately humanizes them in the eyes of those that too often unjustly dismiss them as unworthy of grace.