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The movie boasts a impressive ensemble, depicting the real-life story of coach Brendan Ingle, who guided a brash Sheffield teenager from Middle Eastern migrant parents. Known as “Prince” Naseem Hamed, the youngster was coached to confront prejudice and transformed into a celebrity world champion in the 1990s. Ingle cultivated his flamboyant arrogance and lethal fists, but after achieving wealth, Hamed betrayed his coach, excluding him and turning him into a mix of John Falstaff and Broadway Danny Rose.

Performers and Roles

Brosnan plays the trainer; Amir El-Masry embodies the role of the prince, and Toby Stephens appears as the bullish London promoter Frank Warren, who recognized the potential that Ingle had discovered.

Film’s Shortcomings

Yet, the movie honestly misses the fighter’s fancy footwork: the boxing sequences flow well, but the all-important story in between is consistently flat and monotonous. It lacks nuance or contrast in the depiction of Hamed himself, and El-Masry, an otherwise excellent talent, isn’t given the opportunity to display any depth or much of what might make his character truly engaging – even though he’s obviously been training and looks very plausible in the boxing arena.

Dialogue and Music Issues

The story is often lumbered with functional, expositional dialogue that tell you exactly what is happening and what we are meant to feel (“You started your boxing journey at seven years old …”). It is the sort of script that streaming-TV producers call “second-screen”, ensuring you know what’s unfolding while you’re watching the film but also checking your phone. And, the background music is overbearing, at times almost overwhelming, particularly in the moment where the boxer gets too excited calling on the promoter in his palatial residence.

Acting and Pivotal Scenes

While El-Masry and Brosnan do their considerable utmost, their relationship doesn’t quite comes to life, and the big set-piece fight scenes are often anticlimactically cut short. The most important scene is certainly when, provoked beyond endurance in the gym one day by Hamed as a misguided “elder”, the trainer in fact offers to get in the ring and box him. All present in the room is shocked and uneasy. How exactly is this insanely unwise standoff going to play out? What will be the outcome? Surely the Prince is going to defeat him? Or will he sentimentally pull his punches? It’s not clear.

Highlights and Humor

That’s not to say that there aren’t some nice jabs. Brosnan gets laughs when Ingle tells a journalist what he’s teaching the kids from his local community: to oppose bias and when you meet a paedophile, “Hit them in the bollocks”. Amusing too when the boxer fidgets at the ridiculous antics the coach makes him do in the early days: acting like the “beast from the Middle East”.

Plot and Conclusion

As for the rift, the movie depicts this as being exacerbated by a revealing publication that the trainer is allegedly written (a story element clearly modified from another source), and there is an interestingly conceived final conversation – although the heartfelt homage that Hamed is supposed to have given to his mentor after his death is merely referenced in the closing credits, and not shown on screen. Some interesting material in this film, but the punches fail to connect.

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