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This film boasts a impressive cast, telling the real-life tale of coach Ingle, who mentored a cheeky Yorkshire youth from Middle Eastern migrant parents. Known as Naseem Hamed, the youngster was coached to stand up to prejudice and molded into a media-friendly world champion in the 1990s. The trainer cultivated his showboating confidence and lethal fists, but after becoming rich, the boxer betrayed his mentor, cutting him out and making him a blend of Falstaff and Broadway Danny Rose.

Performers and Roles

Brosnan plays the trainer; El-Masry embodies the role of the prince, and Stephens appears as the assertive promoter Warren, who saw the goldmine that Ingle had uncovered.

Where the Movie Falls Short

However, the film frankly misses the fighter’s fancy footwork: the fight scenes flow well, but the all-important story in between is repeatedly dull and monotonous. It lacks subtlety or light and shade in the portrayal of the protagonist himself, and the actor, an otherwise excellent talent, isn’t given the chance to show any depth or much of what might make his role really interesting – even though he’s clearly been working out and appears convincing in the ring.

Problems with Script and Sound

The drama is repeatedly lumbered with utilitarian, expositional lines that inform you precisely what is happening and what we are meant to feel (“You started your career at seven years old …”). This is the kind of dialogue that digital executives call “double-screen”, ensuring you understand what’s going on while you’re viewing the film but also checking your phone. And, the background music is overpowering, sometimes almost deafening, especially in the moment where Hamed gets too excited visiting Warren in his palatial residence.

Performances and Key Moments

While the leads do their considerable best, their dynamic never really comes to life, and the major boxing moments are often anticlimactically cut short. The most important scene is certainly when, provoked beyond endurance in the gym one day by Hamed as a misguided “elder”, the trainer in fact proposes to get in the ring and fight him. All present in the room is shocked and uncomfortable. In what way is this extremely risky confrontation going to play out? How precisely the ending? Surely the champion is going to kill him? Alternatively will he sentimentally pull his punches? It’s not clear.

Bright Spots and Comedy

That’s not to say that there aren’t some good moments. Brosnan elicits humor when Ingle tells a reporter what he’s instructing the kids from his local community: to reject bias and when you meet a paedophile, “Punch him in the groin”. Amusing too when the boxer squirms at the ridiculous stunts Ingle makes him do in the beginning: posing as the “beast from the East”.

Plot and Conclusion

Regarding the falling out, the movie depicts this as being worsened by a tell-all book that the trainer is supposed to have written (a plot point clearly adapted from another source), and there is an intriguingly conceived last discussion – however the heartfelt homage that the boxer is reportedly paid to his mentor after his death is merely mentioned in the closing credits, and not dramatised on screen. Some engaging content here, but the blows fail to connect.

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