This film features a impressive cast, telling the true story of coach Brendan Ingle, who mentored a cheeky Yorkshire youth from Yemeni migrant parents. Known as Naseem Hamed, the fighter was coached to stand up to prejudice and transformed into a media-friendly world champion in the late 90s. Ingle nurtured his flamboyant arrogance and powerful punches, but after achieving wealth, the boxer turned against his coach, cutting him out and turning him into a mix of Falstaff and Broadway Danny Rose.
Cast and Characters
Pierce Brosnan portrays Ingle; Amir El-Masry takes on the role of Hamed, and Stephens is the assertive promoter Warren, who recognized the potential that Ingle had uncovered.
Film’s Shortcomings
However, the film honestly lacks the Prince’s fancy footwork: the fight scenes flow well, but the crucial story between them is consistently flat and monotonous. There is no subtlety or light and shade in the depiction of Hamed himself, and the actor, an otherwise excellent talent, isn’t given the chance to show any depth or much of what might make his character really interesting – although he’s clearly been training and appears convincing in the boxing arena.
Dialogue and Music Issues
The story is repeatedly lumbered with utilitarian, expositional dialogue that tell you precisely what is happening and what we are supposed to be thinking (“You started your career at age seven …”). This is the sort of script that streaming-TV producers call “double-screen”, making sure you know what’s unfolding while you’re watching the movie but also checking your phone. Additionally, the score is overbearing, sometimes almost overwhelming, especially in the scene where Hamed gets overexcited visiting the promoter in his palatial residence.
Acting and Pivotal Scenes
Although the leads do their considerable utmost, their relationship never really comes to life, and the major fight scenes are often anticlimactically truncated. The most important scene is surely when, provoked past his limit in the training facility one day by Hamed as a misguided “old man”, Ingle in fact offers to step into the ring and fight him. All present in the room is shocked and uneasy. How exactly is this extremely unwise confrontation going to play out? What will be the ending? Surely the champion is going to kill him? Alternatively will he emotionally pull his punches? The resolution remains ambiguous.
Bright Spots and Comedy
This isn’t to imply that there aren’t some nice jabs. Brosnan gets laughs when his character informs a journalist what he’s instructing the kids from his neighborhood: to reject prejudice and when you meet a paedophile, “Punch him in the groin”. Amusing too when Hamed squirms at the silly antics the coach makes him do in the early days: acting like the “beast from the Middle East”.
Storyline and Final Thoughts
Regarding the falling out, the film shows this as being exacerbated by a tell-all publication that Ingle is supposed to have authored (a story element clearly modified from prior material), and there is an interestingly conceived last discussion – although the heartfelt homage that the boxer is supposed to have given to his mentor after his death is merely mentioned in the end titles, and not dramatised on film. Some engaging content in this film, but the blows don’t land.
The film screened at the festival and is in UK and Irish cinemas from 9 January.
