The Giant Review: Naseem Hamed Movie Featuring Pierce Brosnan Lacks the Impact

This film features a impressive ensemble, telling the real-life tale of Irish boxing trainer Brendan Ingle, who mentored a cheeky Sheffield youth from Middle Eastern immigrant family. Known as Naseem Hamed, the youngster was coached to stand up to racist bullies and transformed into a celebrity world champion in the late 90s. Ingle nurtured his showboating confidence and lethal fists, but after becoming rich, Hamed turned against his coach, excluding him and making him a mix of Falstaff and Broadway Danny Rose.

Performers and Roles

Brosnan plays the trainer; El-Masry takes on the part of Hamed, and Toby Stephens is the assertive London promoter Frank Warren, who recognized the potential that the coach had uncovered.

Film’s Shortcomings

Yet, the film honestly misses the Prince’s fancy footwork: the boxing sequences run smoothly, but the crucial story in between is consistently flat and one-note. There is no nuance or light and shade in the depiction of the protagonist himself, and the actor, an otherwise excellent talent, doesn’t get the chance to display any subtlety or much of what might make his character truly engaging – although he’s obviously been working out and looks very plausible in the ring.

Dialogue and Music Issues

The story is often burdened by functional, expositional lines that inform you precisely what is going on and what we are meant to feel (“You started your career at seven years old …”). It is the kind of script that streaming-TV executives call “second-screen”, ensuring you know what’s unfolding while you’re watching the film but also glancing at your device. Additionally, the score is overbearing, sometimes almost overwhelming, especially in the moment where Hamed gets too excited visiting Warren in his luxurious home.

Performances and Key Moments

Although El-Masry and Brosnan do their considerable utmost, their dynamic never really ignites, and the big set-piece fight scenes are frequently anticlimactically cut short. A key moment is surely when, provoked past his limit in the training facility one day by the boxer as a delusional “elder”, the trainer in fact proposes to step into the ring and box him. All present in the gym is shocked and uneasy. How exactly is this extremely unwise confrontation going to unfold? What will be the outcome? Surely the Prince is going to kill him? Or 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. Brosnan gets laughs when his character informs a reporter what he’s instructing the youths from his neighborhood: to reject bias and when you encounter a paedophile, “Hit them in the bollocks”. It’s funny too when the boxer fidgets at the silly stunts the coach makes him do in the beginning: acting like the “monster from the Middle East”.

Storyline and Final Thoughts

As for the rift, the movie shows this as being exacerbated by a revealing book that Ingle is supposed to have written (a plot point clearly adapted from another source), and there is an intriguingly imagined final conversation – although the heartfelt homage that the boxer is reportedly paid to his mentor after his death is only mentioned in the end titles, and not dramatised on screen. Some interesting material here, but the blows fail to connect.

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