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The movie features a impressive cast, depicting the true tale of coach Brendan Ingle, who mentored a brash Yorkshire teenager from Middle Eastern migrant parents. Known as Naseem Hamed, the youngster was taught to stand up to racist bullies and molded into a celebrity titleholder in the late 90s. Ingle cultivated his showboating confidence and lethal fists, but after achieving wealth, Hamed turned against his mentor, cutting him out and making him a mix of Falstaff and Danny Rose.

Cast and Characters

Brosnan plays the trainer; Amir El-Masry embodies the part of Hamed, and Toby Stephens appears as the assertive London promoter Warren, who saw the potential that Ingle had uncovered.

Film’s Shortcomings

However, the film honestly misses the fighter’s agility: the boxing sequences run smoothly, but the all-important drama in between is consistently dull and monotonous. It lacks nuance or light and shade in the depiction of the protagonist himself, and the actor, an otherwise excellent talent, isn’t given the opportunity to display any depth or much of what might make his character really interesting – although he’s clearly been working out and appears convincing in the boxing arena.

Dialogue and Music Issues

The story is often burdened by utilitarian, explanatory lines that inform you precisely what is happening and what we are meant to feel (“You started your career at seven years old …”). It is the sort of script that streaming-TV executives call “double-screen”, making sure you know what’s unfolding while you’re viewing the film but also glancing at your phone. Additionally, the score is overpowering, at times nearly overwhelming, especially in the moment where the boxer gets too excited visiting Warren in his luxurious home.

Performances and Key Moments

While the leads do their very utmost, their relationship doesn’t quite ignites, and the major boxing moments are often anticlimactically cut short. A key moment is certainly when, goaded beyond endurance in the training facility one day by the boxer as a misguided “elder”, the trainer actually proposes to step into the ring and box him. Everyone in the room is shocked and uncomfortable. How exactly is this extremely unwise standoff going to play out? What will be the outcome? Surely the champion is going to kill him? Or will he sentimentally hold back? The resolution remains ambiguous.

Highlights and Humor

That’s not to say that there are no some good moments. The actor gets laughs when Ingle tells a reporter what he’s teaching the youths from his neighborhood: to oppose bias and when you encounter a offender, “Hit them in the groin”. It’s funny too when the boxer fidgets at the ridiculous stunts Ingle makes him do in the beginning: acting like the “monster from the Middle East”.

Storyline and Final Thoughts

Regarding the falling out, the film shows this as being exacerbated by a tell-all publication that the trainer is allegedly authored (a story element evidently adapted from another source), and there is an intriguingly imagined final conversation – although 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 interesting material in this film, but the punches fail to connect.

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