🔗 Share this article

This film features a impressive ensemble, telling the real-life story of coach Ingle, who guided a brash Sheffield youth from Yemeni migrant parents. Known as Naseem Hamed, the fighter was taught to confront racist bullies and molded into a celebrity titleholder in the late 90s. The trainer cultivated his showboating arrogance and powerful punches, but after achieving wealth, Hamed betrayed his coach, excluding him and making him a blend of Falstaff and Danny Rose.

Cast and Characters

Pierce Brosnan plays the trainer; El-Masry takes on the role of Hamed, and Stephens appears as the assertive promoter Warren, who recognized the goldmine that the coach had discovered.

Film’s Shortcomings

However, the film honestly misses the fighter’s fancy footwork: the fight scenes flow well, but the all-important story between them is consistently flat and one-note. There is no subtlety or contrast in the portrayal of Hamed himself, and the actor, an otherwise excellent talent, isn’t given the chance to display any subtlety or much of what might make his role really interesting – even though he’s obviously been working out and looks very plausible in the ring.

Problems with Script and Sound

The drama is often burdened by utilitarian, expositional lines that tell you exactly what is going on and what we are supposed to be thinking (“You started your career at age seven …”). This is the kind of script that digital producers call “double-screen”, making sure you know what’s unfolding while you’re watching the movie but also glancing at your phone. Additionally, the background music is overpowering, sometimes nearly deafening, particularly in the scene where the boxer gets overexcited calling on Warren in his palatial home.

Acting and Pivotal Scenes

While El-Masry and Brosnan do their very utmost, their dynamic doesn’t quite ignites, and the major boxing moments are often anticlimactically truncated. The most important scene is certainly when, goaded past his limit in the training facility one day by Hamed as a delusional “old man”, the trainer in fact proposes to step into the ring and box him. All present in the gym is stunned and uncomfortable. In what way is this extremely risky confrontation going to play out? How precisely the outcome? Certainly the Prince is going to defeat him? Or will he sentimentally pull his punches? It’s not clear.

Highlights and Humor

This isn’t to imply that there aren’t some nice jabs. The actor elicits humor when Ingle tells a reporter what he’s teaching the youths from his neighborhood: to reject bias and when you meet a paedophile, “Hit them in the groin”. It’s funny too when Hamed fidgets at the silly antics the coach makes him do in the early days: acting like the “beast from the Middle East”.

Plot and Conclusion

As for the rift, the film shows this as being worsened by a tell-all publication that Ingle is supposed to have written (a story element clearly modified from another source), and there is an interestingly imagined last discussion – although the emotional tribute that the boxer is supposed to have given to his mentor after his passing is only mentioned in the end titles, and not dramatised on screen. Some interesting material in this film, but the punches don’t land.

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