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The movie boasts a talented cast, telling the real-life story of coach Ingle, who guided a brash Sheffield teenager from Yemeni immigrant parents. Dubbed Naseem Hamed, the fighter was taught to stand up to prejudice and transformed into a celebrity world champion in the 1990s. Ingle cultivated his showboating arrogance and powerful punches, but after becoming rich, the boxer turned against his mentor, cutting him out and turning him into a mix of Falstaff and Broadway Danny Rose.

Cast and Characters

Pierce Brosnan plays the trainer; El-Masry takes on the role of the prince, and Stephens appears as the bullish London promoter Frank Warren, who saw the goldmine that Ingle had discovered.

Film’s Shortcomings

However, the film frankly lacks the fighter’s agility: the fight scenes flow well, but the all-important drama in between is repeatedly dull and one-note. It lacks nuance or contrast in the portrayal of Hamed himself, and the actor, an otherwise outstanding performer, 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 appears convincing in the ring.

Dialogue and Music Issues

The drama is repeatedly burdened by functional, expositional lines that inform you precisely what is happening and what we are supposed to be thinking (“Your journey began your career at seven years old …”). This is the kind of dialogue that streaming-TV executives call “double-screen”, ensuring you know what’s going on while you’re viewing the movie but also checking your phone. And, the background music is overpowering, sometimes almost overwhelming, particularly in the scene where Hamed gets too excited calling on Warren in his palatial home.

Performances and Key Moments

Although El-Masry and Brosnan do their considerable best, their relationship doesn’t quite ignites, and the major boxing moments are often anticlimactically truncated. A key scene is certainly when, provoked beyond endurance in the training facility one day by Hamed as a delusional “old man”, the trainer in fact offers to get in the ring and box him. All present in the gym is stunned and uneasy. How exactly is this insanely risky standoff going to unfold? What will be the outcome? Surely the champion is going to defeat him? Or will he sentimentally hold back? The resolution remains ambiguous.

Bright Spots and Comedy

That’s not to say that there are no some nice jabs. Brosnan elicits humor when Ingle tells a reporter what he’s teaching the kids from his neighborhood: to oppose bias and when you meet a paedophile, “Punch him in the groin”. It’s funny too when Hamed squirms at the ridiculous stunts the coach makes him do in the beginning: acting like the “beast from the East”.

Storyline and Final Thoughts

Regarding the falling out, the movie shows this as being worsened by a revealing publication that Ingle is supposed to have authored (a story element evidently modified from prior material), and there is an intriguingly conceived last discussion – however the emotional tribute that Hamed is supposed to have paid to Ingle after his death is only mentioned in the end titles, and not dramatised on film. Some engaging content here, but the punches fail to connect.

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