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The movie features a impressive ensemble, telling the real-life story of Irish boxing trainer Brendan Ingle, who guided a cheeky Sheffield teenager from Middle Eastern migrant family. Dubbed “Prince” Naseem Hamed, the fighter was taught to stand up to prejudice and molded into a media-friendly world champion in the late 90s. The trainer nurtured his flamboyant arrogance and lethal fists, but after becoming rich, the boxer turned against his coach, excluding him and turning him into a mix of Falstaff and Danny Rose.

Performers and Roles

Pierce Brosnan plays the trainer; Amir El-Masry embodies the role of the prince, and Stephens appears as the assertive London promoter Warren, who saw the potential that Ingle had uncovered.

Film’s Shortcomings

However, the movie honestly misses the fighter’s fancy footwork: the fight scenes flow well, but the crucial drama between them is consistently flat and monotonous. There is no subtlety or contrast in the portrayal of the protagonist himself, and El-Masry, an otherwise outstanding performer, doesn’t get the chance to display any subtlety or much of what might make his character truly engaging – although he’s clearly been training and looks very plausible in the boxing arena.

Dialogue and Music Issues

The drama is repeatedly burdened by functional, explanatory dialogue that inform 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 executives call “second-screen”, ensuring you know what’s going on while you’re viewing the film but also glancing at your device. Additionally, the score is overpowering, sometimes almost deafening, especially in the scene where Hamed gets overexcited visiting the promoter in his palatial home.

Performances and Key Moments

While the leads do their considerable best, their relationship doesn’t quite ignites, and the major fight scenes are frequently disappointingly truncated. The most important scene is certainly when, goaded beyond endurance in the gym one day by the boxer as a misguided “old man”, the trainer actually proposes to step into the ring and fight him. All present in the gym is stunned and uncomfortable. How exactly is this extremely unwise standoff going to play out? How precisely the ending? Surely 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 are no some nice jabs. The actor elicits humor when Ingle tells a journalist what he’s instructing the kids from his local community: to reject prejudice and when you meet a paedophile, “Punch him in the groin”. Amusing too when Hamed squirms at the ridiculous antics Ingle makes him do in the beginning: posing as the “beast from the Middle East”.

Plot and Conclusion

As for the falling out, the film shows this as being worsened by a revealing book that Ingle is allegedly written (a plot point evidently modified from prior material), and there is an intriguingly imagined final conversation – although the heartfelt homage that Hamed is reportedly paid to Ingle after his passing is merely referenced in the end titles, and not dramatised on screen. Some interesting material in this film, but the blows don’t land.

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