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The movie features a talented cast, telling the real-life story of coach Brendan Ingle, who guided a cheeky Sheffield teenager from Yemeni immigrant parents. Known as “Prince” Naseem Hamed, the youngster was coached to confront racist bullies and transformed into a media-friendly world champion in the 1990s. The trainer nurtured his showboating confidence and lethal fists, but after becoming rich, Hamed betrayed his mentor, excluding him and making him a blend of Falstaff and Danny Rose.

Cast and Characters

Pierce Brosnan portrays the trainer; El-Masry embodies the part of Hamed, and Stephens appears as the bullish promoter Warren, who recognized the potential that Ingle had discovered.

Where the Movie Falls Short

Yet, the film frankly misses the fighter’s fancy footwork: the boxing sequences flow well, but the all-important story in between is repeatedly dull and one-note. There is no nuance or light and shade in the depiction of Hamed himself, and the actor, an otherwise excellent talent, isn’t given the opportunity to display any depth or much of what might make his character truly engaging – although he’s clearly been working out and looks very plausible in the ring.

Dialogue and Music Issues

The story is repeatedly lumbered with functional, explanatory dialogue that tell you exactly what is happening and what we are supposed to be thinking (“You started your career at seven years old …”). It is the sort of dialogue that streaming-TV producers call “double-screen”, ensuring you know what’s going on while you’re watching the film but also glancing at your phone. And, the score is overpowering, sometimes nearly overwhelming, particularly in the moment where Hamed gets too excited visiting the promoter in his palatial residence.

Acting and Pivotal Scenes

While the leads do their considerable best, their relationship never really comes to life, and the major boxing moments are frequently anticlimactically cut short. A key scene is certainly when, provoked past his limit in the training facility one day by the boxer as a misguided “old man”, the trainer in fact proposes to get in the ring and fight him. All present in the gym is stunned and uncomfortable. How exactly is this extremely risky standoff going to play out? How precisely the ending? Certainly the champion is going to defeat him? Or will he emotionally hold back? The resolution remains ambiguous.

Highlights and Humor

This isn’t to imply that there aren’t some nice jabs. The actor elicits humor when Ingle informs a journalist what he’s teaching the kids from his local community: to reject prejudice and when you encounter a offender, “Punch him in the bollocks”. Amusing too when Hamed fidgets at the ridiculous stunts Ingle makes him do in the early days: acting like the “monster from the East”.

Plot and Conclusion

As for the falling out, the film depicts this as being exacerbated by a tell-all publication that Ingle is supposed to have written (a plot point evidently adapted from another source), and there is an intriguingly imagined final conversation – although the emotional tribute that Hamed is reportedly given to his mentor after his death is only mentioned in the closing credits, and not dramatised on film. There is interesting material in this film, but the punches don’t land.

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