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The movie features a talented ensemble, telling the real-life story of Irish boxing trainer Brendan Ingle, who mentored a brash Sheffield teenager from Middle Eastern immigrant parents. Dubbed Naseem Hamed, the youngster was coached to stand up to prejudice and transformed into a celebrity world champion in the 1990s. The trainer cultivated his flamboyant confidence and lethal fists, but after achieving wealth, Hamed turned against his coach, cutting him out and turning him into a mix of Falstaff and Danny Rose.

Cast and Characters

Brosnan portrays the trainer; Amir El-Masry takes on the role of Hamed, and Stephens appears as the bullish London promoter Warren, who recognized the potential that the coach had discovered.

Where the Movie Falls Short

However, the film honestly lacks the Prince’s agility: the fight scenes run smoothly, but the all-important story in between is repeatedly dull and one-note. It lacks subtlety or light and shade in the portrayal of Hamed himself, and the actor, an otherwise excellent talent, doesn’t get the chance to show any depth or much of what might make his role truly engaging – even though he’s clearly been training and looks very plausible in the boxing arena.

Dialogue and Music Issues

The drama is often lumbered with functional, expositional dialogue that tell you precisely what is going on and what we are meant to feel (“You started your career at seven years old …”). It is the kind of script that streaming-TV executives call “double-screen”, ensuring you understand what’s unfolding while you’re viewing the film but also glancing at your device. And, the background music is overpowering, at times almost overwhelming, especially in the moment where Hamed gets too excited calling on Warren in his palatial home.

Performances and Key Moments

While El-Masry and Brosnan do their very utmost, their relationship doesn’t quite comes to life, and the major boxing moments are often disappointingly truncated. The most important scene is certainly when, provoked past his limit in the gym one day by the boxer as a misguided “elder”, Ingle actually offers to get in the ring and fight him. Everyone in the gym is stunned and uncomfortable. How exactly is this extremely risky standoff going to unfold? How precisely the outcome? Certainly the Prince is going to defeat him? Alternatively will he emotionally pull his punches? The resolution remains ambiguous.

Bright Spots and Comedy

That’s not to say that there aren’t some good moments. The actor elicits humor when his character tells a reporter what he’s instructing the youths from his neighborhood: to oppose bias and when you meet a offender, “Punch him in the bollocks”. Amusing too when Hamed squirms at the ridiculous stunts the coach makes him do in the early days: acting like the “beast from the Middle East”.

Storyline and Final Thoughts

As for the falling out, the movie shows this as being worsened by a revealing book that the trainer is supposed to have written (a story element clearly modified from another source), and there is an interestingly imagined last discussion – although the heartfelt homage that the boxer is supposed to have paid to his mentor after his death is only mentioned in the end titles, and not shown on film. There is engaging content in this film, but the blows don’t land.

The film was shown at the London film festival and is in British and Irish theaters from 9 January.