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The movie boasts a talented ensemble, telling the true story of Irish boxing trainer Ingle, who mentored a brash Sheffield teenager from Middle Eastern immigrant parents. Dubbed Naseem Hamed, the fighter was coached to stand up to racist bullies and molded into a media-friendly world champion in the late 90s. Ingle nurtured his flamboyant arrogance and lethal fists, but after becoming rich, the boxer betrayed his mentor, excluding him and turning him into a mix of Falstaff and Broadway Danny Rose.

Cast and Characters

Brosnan portrays Ingle; Amir El-Masry embodies the role of the prince, and Toby Stephens appears as the bullish London promoter Frank Warren, who saw the potential that the coach had uncovered.

Where the Movie Falls Short

However, the movie honestly misses the fighter’s agility: the fight scenes run smoothly, but the crucial drama in between is repeatedly flat and one-note. It lacks subtlety or contrast in the depiction of Hamed himself, and El-Masry, an otherwise outstanding performer, doesn’t get the opportunity to show any depth or much of what might make his character really interesting – even though he’s obviously been training and looks very plausible in the boxing arena.

Problems with Script and Sound

The story is repeatedly burdened by functional, expositional dialogue that tell you exactly what is happening and what we are meant to feel (“You started your boxing journey at age seven …”). This is the sort of script that streaming-TV producers call “second-screen”, ensuring you understand what’s going on while you’re viewing the movie but also checking your phone. Additionally, the score is overpowering, sometimes nearly deafening, especially in the moment where the boxer gets overexcited visiting Warren in his luxurious residence.

Acting and Pivotal Scenes

While the leads do their very best, their relationship doesn’t quite comes to life, and the major fight scenes are frequently anticlimactically cut short. A key scene is certainly when, provoked past his limit in the training facility one day by Hamed as a delusional “old man”, the trainer in fact offers to step into the ring and box him. Everyone in the gym is stunned and uncomfortable. In what way is this extremely unwise confrontation going to unfold? How precisely the ending? Certainly the Prince is going to kill him? Or will he emotionally pull his punches? It’s not clear.

Bright Spots and Comedy

This isn’t to imply that there aren’t some nice jabs. Brosnan elicits humor when Ingle informs a journalist what he’s teaching the youths from his neighborhood: to oppose prejudice and when you meet a offender, “Hit them in the bollocks”. Amusing too when Hamed squirms at the ridiculous stunts the coach makes him do in the early days: posing as the “beast from the Middle East”.

Plot and Conclusion

Regarding the falling out, the movie depicts this as being worsened by a tell-all publication that the trainer is supposed to have authored (a plot point evidently adapted from another source), and there is an intriguingly imagined last discussion – although the emotional tribute that the boxer is reportedly paid to Ingle after his passing is merely mentioned in the closing credits, and not dramatised on screen. There is interesting material here, but the punches fail to connect.

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