🔗 Share this article

The movie features a talented ensemble, telling the real-life tale of Irish boxing trainer Ingle, who mentored a cheeky Yorkshire youth from Middle Eastern immigrant family. Known as Naseem Hamed, the youngster was coached to stand up to prejudice and molded into a celebrity world champion in the 1990s. Ingle cultivated his showboating confidence and lethal fists, but after becoming rich, the boxer turned against his coach, excluding him and making him a mix of John Falstaff and Broadway Danny Rose.

Performers and Roles

Brosnan portrays the trainer; El-Masry takes on the role of the prince, and Stephens appears as the bullish London promoter Frank Warren, who recognized the potential that the coach had discovered.

Film’s Shortcomings

However, the film frankly misses the fighter’s fancy footwork: the boxing sequences run smoothly, but the crucial story between them is consistently dull and one-note. It lacks nuance or contrast in the portrayal of the protagonist himself, and El-Masry, an otherwise outstanding performer, doesn’t get the chance to show any depth or much of what might make his character truly engaging – although he’s clearly been training and appears convincing in the ring.

Dialogue and Music Issues

The story is often burdened by utilitarian, explanatory dialogue that inform you exactly what is happening and what we are meant to feel (“Your journey began your career at seven years old …”). It is the sort of dialogue that streaming-TV executives call “double-screen”, making sure you know what’s going on while you’re viewing the film but also checking your device. And, the background music is overpowering, sometimes almost overwhelming, particularly in the moment where Hamed gets too excited visiting Warren in his palatial residence.

Acting and Pivotal Scenes

Although El-Masry and Brosnan do their very best, their relationship doesn’t quite comes to life, and the major boxing moments 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 actually proposes to step into the ring and fight him. All present in the room is shocked and uneasy. In what way is this insanely risky confrontation going to play out? How precisely the ending? Surely the Prince is going to defeat him? Or will he sentimentally pull his punches? The resolution remains ambiguous.

Highlights and Humor

That’s not to say that there are no some nice jabs. Brosnan gets laughs when Ingle tells a journalist what he’s instructing the youths from his local community: to oppose bias and when you meet a offender, “Hit them in the bollocks”. It’s funny too when the boxer squirms at the ridiculous antics Ingle makes him do in the early days: posing as the “beast from the East”.

Plot and Conclusion

Regarding the rift, the film shows this as being worsened by a tell-all publication that the trainer is supposed to have written (a plot point evidently modified from another source), and there is an intriguingly conceived final conversation – although the heartfelt homage that Hamed is supposed to have given to his mentor after his passing is only referenced in the closing credits, and not shown on screen. Some interesting material in this film, but the blows fail to connect.

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