The Giant Review: Naseem Hamed Movie Starring Pierce Brosnan Lacks the Punch

This film features a talented ensemble, telling the real-life story of Irish boxing trainer Brendan Ingle, who guided a brash Yorkshire teenager from Middle Eastern migrant family. Known as Naseem Hamed, the youngster was coached to confront racist bullies and molded into a media-friendly titleholder in the 1990s. The trainer cultivated his showboating confidence and lethal fists, but after achieving wealth, the boxer betrayed his coach, cutting him out and making him a mix of Falstaff and Broadway Danny Rose.

Cast and Characters

Pierce Brosnan portrays the trainer; Amir El-Masry embodies the part of the prince, and Toby Stephens appears as the bullish London promoter Frank Warren, who saw the potential that the coach had discovered.

Where the Movie Falls Short

However, the film honestly lacks the fighter’s agility: the boxing sequences run smoothly, but the crucial story in between is repeatedly dull and monotonous. It lacks nuance or contrast in the depiction of Hamed himself, and El-Masry, an otherwise outstanding performer, isn’t given the chance to display any subtlety or much of what might make his role really interesting – even though he’s obviously been working out and appears convincing in the ring.

Problems with Script and Sound

The story is often lumbered with utilitarian, explanatory lines that inform you precisely what is happening and what we are supposed to be thinking (“Your journey began your boxing journey at seven years old …”). This is the sort of dialogue that digital producers call “double-screen”, making sure you understand what’s unfolding while you’re watching the movie but also checking your phone. Additionally, the background music is overbearing, sometimes almost deafening, particularly in the scene where Hamed gets too excited calling on the promoter in his palatial residence.

Performances and Key Moments

Although El-Masry and Brosnan do their very best, their dynamic doesn’t quite comes to life, and the major fight scenes are often disappointingly truncated. A key scene is surely when, provoked beyond endurance in the gym one day by Hamed 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? What will be the ending? Surely the Prince is going to defeat him? Or will he sentimentally hold back? It’s not clear.

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 instructing the kids from his neighborhood: to oppose bias and when you meet a offender, “Hit them in the groin”. It’s funny too when the boxer fidgets at the silly stunts Ingle makes him do in the beginning: posing as the “beast from the Middle East”.

Storyline and Final Thoughts

As for the falling out, the film depicts this as being exacerbated by a revealing publication that the trainer is allegedly written (a plot point clearly modified from another source), and there is an interestingly conceived last discussion – however the heartfelt homage that the boxer is reportedly paid to his mentor after his passing is merely mentioned in the end titles, and not dramatised on screen. There is interesting material here, but the punches fail to connect.

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