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This film features a talented ensemble, telling the real-life tale of Irish boxing trainer Brendan Ingle, who mentored a cheeky Sheffield teenager from Middle Eastern immigrant parents. Dubbed “Prince” Naseem Hamed, the youngster was coached to stand up to racist bullies and transformed into a celebrity world champion in the 1990s. Ingle nurtured his flamboyant confidence and lethal fists, but after becoming rich, Hamed turned against his mentor, excluding him and making him a blend of Falstaff and Danny Rose.

Cast and Characters

Pierce Brosnan plays Ingle; El-Masry takes on the role of the prince, and Toby Stephens is the assertive promoter Frank Warren, who saw the goldmine that the coach had uncovered.

Film’s Shortcomings

However, the film frankly lacks the Prince’s fancy footwork: the boxing sequences run smoothly, but the crucial drama in between is consistently dull and one-note. It lacks nuance or contrast in the depiction of Hamed himself, and El-Masry, an otherwise excellent talent, isn’t given the opportunity to display any depth or much of what might make his character truly engaging – although he’s obviously been working out and looks very plausible in the boxing arena.

Dialogue and Music Issues

The drama is often burdened by utilitarian, expositional dialogue that inform you exactly what is going on and what we are meant to feel (“You started your career at seven years old …”). It is the kind of dialogue that digital executives call “second-screen”, making sure you know what’s unfolding while you’re viewing the film but also checking your device. And, the background music is overpowering, at times almost deafening, particularly in the scene where Hamed gets overexcited calling on Warren in his luxurious residence.

Performances and Key Moments

While the leads do their considerable utmost, their dynamic doesn’t quite comes to life, and the major boxing moments are frequently anticlimactically truncated. The most important moment is certainly when, provoked beyond endurance in the gym one day by the boxer as a delusional “old man”, Ingle in fact proposes to step into the ring and fight him. Everyone in the room is shocked and uncomfortable. How exactly is this insanely unwise confrontation going to play out? How precisely the ending? Certainly the champion is going to defeat him? Or will he emotionally pull his punches? It’s not clear.

Bright Spots and Comedy

That’s not to say that there are no some nice jabs. The actor elicits humor when his character informs a reporter what he’s instructing the kids from his neighborhood: to reject prejudice and when you meet a offender, “Punch him in the groin”. Amusing too when the boxer fidgets at the ridiculous antics Ingle makes him do in the early days: posing as the “beast from the East”.

Storyline and Final Thoughts

Regarding the falling out, the film depicts this as being exacerbated by a revealing publication that Ingle is supposed to have authored (a story element evidently adapted from another source), and there is an intriguingly conceived final conversation – however the emotional tribute that the boxer is supposed to have paid to his mentor after his death is only referenced in the end titles, and not dramatised on film. There is engaging content here, but the blows don’t land.

Giant screened at the London film festival and is in British and Irish theaters from 9 January.