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This film boasts a impressive ensemble, telling the real-life story of coach Ingle, who guided a brash Yorkshire teenager from Middle Eastern immigrant family. Known as “Prince” Naseem Hamed, the fighter was coached to stand up to prejudice and transformed into a media-friendly world champion in the 1990s. Ingle nurtured his flamboyant confidence and lethal fists, but after achieving wealth, the boxer turned against his coach, cutting him out and making him a blend of John Falstaff and Broadway Danny Rose.

Performers and Roles

Pierce Brosnan portrays the trainer; Amir El-Masry takes on the role of the prince, and Stephens is the assertive promoter Warren, who recognized the potential that Ingle had uncovered.

Where the Movie Falls Short

However, the film frankly misses the fighter’s fancy footwork: the fight scenes flow well, but the crucial drama in between is consistently flat and monotonous. It lacks subtlety 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 subtlety or much of what might make his role truly engaging – although he’s clearly been working out and looks very plausible in the ring.

Problems with Script and Sound

The story is often lumbered with utilitarian, explanatory lines that tell you exactly what is going on and what we are meant to feel (“Your journey began your career at age seven …”). This is the sort of dialogue that streaming-TV producers call “second-screen”, making sure you understand what’s going on while you’re viewing the movie but also checking your device. And, the score is overpowering, at times almost overwhelming, particularly in the scene where the boxer gets too excited visiting the promoter in his palatial residence.

Performances and Key Moments

Although El-Masry and Brosnan do their very best, their relationship doesn’t quite ignites, and the big set-piece boxing moments are frequently anticlimactically truncated. 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. In what way is this extremely unwise standoff going to unfold? What will be the outcome? Certainly the champion is going to defeat him? Alternatively will he sentimentally pull his punches? The resolution remains ambiguous.

Highlights and Humor

This isn’t to imply that there aren’t some good moments. Brosnan elicits humor when his character informs a reporter what he’s teaching the youths from his local community: to oppose prejudice and when you meet a offender, “Punch him 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 rift, the film depicts this as being exacerbated by a tell-all book that the trainer is allegedly authored (a story element evidently modified from another source), and there is an intriguingly conceived final conversation – however the emotional tribute that Hamed is reportedly paid to his mentor after his death is merely referenced in the end titles, and not dramatised on screen. There is interesting material here, but the punches don’t land.

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