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This film features a talented ensemble, telling the real-life story of coach Brendan Ingle, who guided a cheeky Sheffield teenager from Yemeni migrant family. Dubbed Naseem Hamed, the youngster was coached to confront racist bullies and transformed into a media-friendly titleholder in the 1990s. The trainer cultivated his flamboyant arrogance and lethal fists, but after becoming rich, Hamed betrayed his coach, cutting him out and making him a blend of Falstaff and Danny Rose.

Cast and Characters

Pierce Brosnan portrays Ingle; El-Masry embodies the role of the prince, and Stephens is the assertive promoter Frank Warren, who saw the potential that Ingle had uncovered.

Film’s Shortcomings

However, the film frankly lacks the Prince’s agility: the boxing sequences flow well, but the crucial story in between is consistently flat and one-note. It lacks nuance or light and shade in the portrayal of Hamed himself, and El-Masry, an otherwise excellent talent, doesn’t get the chance to show any depth or much of what might make his role really interesting – even though he’s clearly been training and looks very plausible in the ring.

Dialogue and Music Issues

The story is often lumbered with utilitarian, explanatory dialogue that tell you exactly what is happening and what we are meant to feel (“You started your boxing journey at age seven …”). It is the kind of script that streaming-TV producers call “double-screen”, making sure you know what’s going on while you’re viewing the film but also glancing at your device. And, the score is overbearing, at times almost deafening, especially in the scene where the boxer gets overexcited visiting Warren in his luxurious residence.

Acting and Pivotal Scenes

Although the leads do their very utmost, their dynamic never really ignites, and the big set-piece boxing moments are often disappointingly truncated. A key scene is surely when, goaded beyond endurance in the training facility one day by the boxer as a delusional “old man”, Ingle actually offers to step into the ring and box him. All present in the room is stunned and uneasy. How exactly is this insanely unwise standoff going to play out? How precisely the ending? Certainly the champion is going to defeat him? Or will he emotionally hold back? It’s not clear.

Bright Spots and Comedy

That’s not to say that there aren’t some nice jabs. Brosnan gets laughs when Ingle informs a reporter what he’s teaching the youths from his local community: to reject prejudice and when you encounter a paedophile, “Hit them in the groin”. It’s funny too when the boxer squirms at the ridiculous antics Ingle makes him do in the beginning: posing as the “monster from the East”.

Plot and Conclusion

As for the rift, the movie shows this as being worsened by a tell-all publication that Ingle is supposed to have authored (a story element clearly modified from another source), and there is an interestingly imagined final conversation – however the heartfelt homage that the boxer is supposed to have given to his mentor after his death is merely mentioned in the closing credits, and not dramatised on screen. Some interesting material in this film, but the blows don’t land.

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