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This film boasts a talented ensemble, telling the true tale of coach Brendan Ingle, who mentored a cheeky Yorkshire teenager from Yemeni migrant family. Known as Naseem Hamed, the youngster was coached to confront racist bullies and transformed into a media-friendly world champion in the late 90s. The trainer nurtured his flamboyant confidence and powerful punches, but after achieving wealth, the boxer turned against his coach, excluding him and turning him into a blend of John Falstaff and Danny Rose.

Cast and Characters

Pierce Brosnan portrays Ingle; Amir El-Masry takes on the part of Hamed, and Toby Stephens appears as the bullish London promoter Frank Warren, who recognized the potential that Ingle had discovered.

Film’s Shortcomings

However, the film frankly lacks the fighter’s agility: the boxing sequences run smoothly, but the all-important story in between is repeatedly dull and monotonous. It lacks nuance or contrast in the depiction of Hamed himself, and the actor, an otherwise outstanding performer, isn’t given the opportunity to show any depth or much of what might make his role really interesting – although he’s obviously been working out and appears convincing in the boxing arena.

Dialogue and Music Issues

The drama is repeatedly burdened by functional, expositional lines that inform you exactly what is going on and what we are meant to feel (“You started your boxing journey at seven years old …”). This is the kind of script that streaming-TV producers call “second-screen”, ensuring you understand what’s unfolding while you’re watching the movie but also checking your phone. And, the score is overbearing, at times almost deafening, especially in the scene where Hamed gets overexcited calling on Warren in his luxurious home.

Acting and Pivotal Scenes

While the leads do their very utmost, their dynamic never really ignites, and the big set-piece fight scenes are often anticlimactically truncated. The most important moment is certainly when, goaded beyond endurance in the gym one day by the boxer as a misguided “elder”, the trainer in fact offers to step into the ring and fight him. Everyone in the room is shocked and uneasy. How exactly is this insanely risky standoff going to play out? How precisely the ending? Surely the Prince is going to kill him? Alternatively will he sentimentally hold back? It’s not clear.

Highlights and Humor

That’s not to say that there aren’t some good moments. Brosnan elicits humor when his character informs a journalist what he’s instructing the kids from his local community: to oppose prejudice and when you meet a offender, “Hit them in the bollocks”. Amusing too when Hamed squirms at the silly antics the coach makes him do in the beginning: acting like the “monster from the East”.

Plot and Conclusion

As for the rift, the movie depicts this as being exacerbated by a tell-all publication that the trainer is supposed to have written (a plot point evidently adapted from prior material), and there is an intriguingly conceived final conversation – however the emotional tribute that Hamed is reportedly paid to Ingle after his passing is merely referenced in the closing credits, and not dramatised on screen. There is engaging content in this film, but the blows fail to connect.

The film screened at the London film festival and is available in UK and Irish cinemas from January 9.