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The movie features a impressive ensemble, telling the real-life tale of Irish boxing trainer Ingle, who mentored a cheeky Sheffield youth from Middle Eastern immigrant family. Known as Naseem Hamed, the fighter was coached to confront prejudice and molded into a media-friendly world champion in the late 90s. Ingle cultivated his showboating arrogance and powerful punches, but after achieving wealth, the boxer turned against his coach, cutting him out and making him a mix of Falstaff and Broadway Danny Rose.

Performers and Roles

Pierce Brosnan portrays Ingle; El-Masry embodies the part of Hamed, and Toby Stephens appears as the bullish promoter Frank 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 drama in between is repeatedly dull and monotonous. It lacks nuance or light and shade in the portrayal of the protagonist himself, and the actor, an otherwise outstanding performer, isn’t given the chance to display any subtlety or much of what might make his role truly engaging – even though he’s clearly been working out and looks very plausible in the boxing arena.

Dialogue and Music Issues

The story is repeatedly burdened by utilitarian, explanatory lines that inform you precisely what is going on and what we are meant to feel (“You started your boxing journey at age seven …”). This is the kind of dialogue that digital executives call “second-screen”, ensuring you know what’s going on while you’re watching the film but also glancing at your phone. And, the score is overbearing, sometimes almost overwhelming, particularly in the scene where Hamed gets too excited visiting the promoter in his palatial home.

Acting and Pivotal Scenes

Although El-Masry and Brosnan do their very best, their relationship doesn’t quite comes to life, and the big set-piece fight scenes are often anticlimactically truncated. The most important scene is certainly when, goaded beyond endurance in the training facility one day by Hamed as a misguided “elder”, Ingle in fact proposes to step into the ring and box him. All present in the gym is shocked and uneasy. How exactly is this extremely risky confrontation going to play out? How precisely the ending? Certainly the Prince is going to kill him? Alternatively will he sentimentally pull his punches? The resolution remains ambiguous.

Highlights and Humor

That’s not to say that there are no some good moments. Brosnan gets laughs when his character informs a journalist what he’s teaching the youths from his neighborhood: to oppose bias and when you meet a paedophile, “Hit them in the groin”. It’s funny too when the boxer squirms at the ridiculous antics the coach makes him do in the early days: posing as the “monster from the East”.

Plot and Conclusion

Regarding the falling out, the film shows this as being exacerbated by a tell-all book that the trainer is supposed to have written (a story element clearly modified from prior material), and there is an intriguingly imagined last discussion – although the emotional tribute that Hamed is reportedly paid to his mentor after his passing is merely mentioned in the end titles, and not dramatised on film. Some interesting material in this film, but the blows don’t land.

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