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This film boasts a impressive ensemble, telling the true story of Irish boxing trainer Brendan Ingle, who guided a cheeky Sheffield youth from Middle Eastern migrant parents. Known as Naseem Hamed, the fighter was coached to confront racist bullies and molded into a celebrity world champion in the 1990s. The trainer cultivated his showboating arrogance and lethal fists, but after becoming rich, the boxer turned against his mentor, cutting him out and turning him into a mix of Falstaff and Danny Rose.

Performers and Roles

Pierce Brosnan portrays Ingle; El-Masry embodies the part of the prince, and Toby Stephens appears as the bullish promoter Frank Warren, who recognized the goldmine that Ingle had discovered.

Film’s Shortcomings

However, the film honestly lacks the fighter’s fancy footwork: the fight scenes run smoothly, but the crucial drama in between is repeatedly dull and one-note. It lacks nuance or light and shade in the portrayal of Hamed himself, and the actor, an otherwise excellent talent, isn’t given the opportunity to display any depth or much of what might make his role truly engaging – even though he’s obviously been working out and looks very plausible in the boxing arena.

Problems with Script and Sound

The story is often lumbered with utilitarian, expositional dialogue that tell you exactly what is happening and what we are supposed to be thinking (“Your journey began your career at age seven …”). This is the sort of dialogue that digital producers call “second-screen”, making sure you understand what’s unfolding while you’re viewing the film but also glancing at your phone. Additionally, the score is overbearing, at times almost deafening, especially in the scene where the boxer gets overexcited calling on the promoter in his palatial residence.

Performances and Key Moments

While El-Masry and Brosnan do their very utmost, their relationship never really ignites, and the big set-piece fight scenes are often disappointingly cut short. The most important moment is certainly when, provoked past his limit in the training facility one day by the boxer as a misguided “elder”, Ingle in fact proposes to get in the ring and box him. Everyone in the gym is stunned and uncomfortable. How exactly is this insanely risky standoff going to play out? How precisely the ending? Certainly the champion is going to defeat him? Alternatively will he emotionally pull his punches? The resolution remains ambiguous.

Highlights and Humor

That’s not to say that there are no some nice jabs. Brosnan elicits humor when his character informs a journalist what he’s instructing the youths from his neighborhood: to oppose prejudice and when you encounter 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 “monster from the Middle East”.

Storyline and Final Thoughts

Regarding the rift, the movie shows this as being exacerbated by a revealing book that the trainer is supposed to have written (a story element evidently modified from prior material), and there is an intriguingly conceived final conversation – although the emotional tribute that Hamed is reportedly paid to Ingle after his passing is only referenced in the closing credits, and not shown on film. Some interesting material in this film, but the blows don’t land.

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