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This film features a impressive ensemble, telling the real-life story of Irish boxing trainer Brendan Ingle, who mentored a brash Sheffield teenager from Yemeni migrant parents. Dubbed Naseem Hamed, the youngster was taught to stand up to racist bullies and molded into a celebrity world champion in the 1990s. The trainer nurtured his flamboyant arrogance and lethal fists, but after becoming rich, Hamed turned against his coach, excluding him and turning him into a blend of Falstaff and Danny Rose.

Cast and Characters

Pierce Brosnan portrays the trainer; El-Masry embodies the part of Hamed, and Toby Stephens appears as the assertive London promoter Frank Warren, who recognized the potential that the coach had discovered.

Film’s Shortcomings

However, the movie frankly lacks the fighter’s fancy footwork: the fight scenes flow well, but the crucial story between them is consistently flat and monotonous. There is no nuance or contrast in the depiction of the protagonist himself, and El-Masry, an otherwise excellent talent, doesn’t get the chance to show any depth or much of what might make his character really interesting – even though he’s obviously been training and appears convincing in the ring.

Problems with Script and Sound

The story is repeatedly lumbered with functional, explanatory dialogue that inform you precisely what is happening and what we are supposed to be thinking (“Your journey began your career at seven years old …”). It is the sort of dialogue that streaming-TV executives call “second-screen”, ensuring you know what’s going on while you’re viewing the film but also glancing at your phone. Additionally, the background music is overbearing, at times almost deafening, particularly in the moment where the boxer gets too excited visiting Warren in his palatial residence.

Acting and Pivotal Scenes

Although El-Masry and Brosnan do their considerable best, their dynamic doesn’t quite comes to life, and the major fight scenes are often anticlimactically cut short. The most important moment is surely when, provoked past his limit in the training facility one day by Hamed as a delusional “elder”, Ingle actually offers to get in the ring and fight him. All present in the room is shocked and uneasy. How exactly is this insanely unwise standoff going to unfold? How precisely the outcome? Certainly the champion is going to defeat him? Alternatively will he sentimentally hold back? It’s not clear.

Highlights and Humor

That’s not to say that there are no some nice jabs. Brosnan elicits humor when Ingle tells a journalist what he’s instructing the youths from his neighborhood: to oppose prejudice and when you meet a offender, “Punch him in the bollocks”. Amusing too when the boxer fidgets at the ridiculous antics Ingle makes him do in the beginning: posing as the “monster from the East”.

Storyline and Final Thoughts

Regarding the rift, the movie depicts this as being worsened by a tell-all book that Ingle is supposed to have written (a story element clearly modified from another source), and there is an interestingly conceived final conversation – however the emotional tribute that Hamed is reportedly given to his mentor after his passing is only mentioned in the end titles, and not shown on screen. Some engaging content in this film, but the blows don’t land.

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