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This film features a talented ensemble, telling the real-life story of coach Brendan Ingle, who guided a brash Yorkshire teenager from Middle Eastern migrant family. Known as Naseem Hamed, the youngster was taught to confront racist bullies and molded into a celebrity world champion in the 1990s. The trainer cultivated his flamboyant confidence and powerful punches, but after becoming rich, the boxer turned against his mentor, cutting him out and making him a mix of Falstaff and Broadway Danny Rose.

Cast and Characters

Brosnan plays the trainer; El-Masry takes on the part of Hamed, and Toby Stephens appears as the bullish promoter Frank Warren, who saw the potential that the coach had discovered.

Film’s Shortcomings

Yet, the movie frankly misses the Prince’s agility: the boxing sequences flow well, but the crucial drama in between is consistently flat and one-note. It lacks nuance or light and shade in the portrayal of the protagonist himself, and the actor, an otherwise outstanding performer, isn’t given the chance to display any depth or much of what might make his role truly engaging – even though he’s obviously been training and appears convincing in the ring.

Problems with Script and Sound

The story is repeatedly lumbered with utilitarian, explanatory lines that inform you precisely what is going on and what we are supposed to be thinking (“Your journey began your career at seven years old …”). This is the sort of dialogue that streaming-TV executives call “second-screen”, ensuring you know what’s unfolding while you’re viewing the film but also glancing at your device. Additionally, the score is overpowering, sometimes almost overwhelming, particularly in the moment where Hamed gets overexcited visiting the promoter in his palatial home.

Performances and Key Moments

While the leads do their considerable utmost, their relationship never really ignites, and the major fight scenes are often anticlimactically cut short. The most important moment is surely when, goaded past his limit in the gym one day by Hamed as a misguided “old man”, Ingle in fact proposes to get in the ring and fight him. Everyone in the room is shocked and uncomfortable. How exactly is this insanely risky confrontation going to unfold? What will be the ending? Certainly the Prince is going to kill him? Alternatively will he sentimentally hold back? The resolution remains ambiguous.

Highlights and Humor

That’s not to say that there aren’t some nice jabs. Brosnan gets laughs when his character tells a journalist what he’s teaching the youths from his neighborhood: to reject bias and when you meet a paedophile, “Punch him in the bollocks”. Amusing too when Hamed squirms at the ridiculous stunts Ingle makes him do in the beginning: posing as the “monster from the East”.

Storyline and Final Thoughts

As for the rift, the film shows this as being exacerbated by a tell-all book that the trainer is supposed to have written (a story element evidently modified from prior material), and there is an interestingly conceived final conversation – although the heartfelt homage that Hamed is supposed to have paid to his mentor after his passing is only mentioned in the closing credits, and not shown on screen. Some engaging content in this film, but the punches don’t land.

Giant screened at the festival and is available in UK and Irish theaters from January 9.