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This film features a talented ensemble, telling the true tale of Irish boxing trainer Ingle, who mentored a brash Yorkshire teenager from Yemeni migrant family. Dubbed “Prince” Naseem Hamed, the fighter was taught to confront racist bullies and molded into a celebrity world champion in the late 90s. Ingle nurtured his showboating arrogance and lethal fists, but after achieving wealth, Hamed betrayed his coach, excluding him and turning him into a mix of John Falstaff and Danny Rose.

Cast and Characters

Pierce Brosnan portrays Ingle; Amir El-Masry takes on the role of Hamed, and Stephens is the bullish promoter Frank Warren, who recognized the potential that the coach had discovered.

Where the Movie Falls Short

However, the movie honestly lacks the fighter’s fancy footwork: the fight scenes run smoothly, but the all-important story in between is repeatedly flat and monotonous. There is no nuance or light and shade in the depiction of the protagonist himself, and El-Masry, an otherwise excellent talent, doesn’t get the opportunity to display any depth or much of what might make his role really interesting – even though he’s obviously been training and looks very plausible in the ring.

Dialogue and Music Issues

The drama is often lumbered with functional, explanatory lines that inform you precisely what is happening and what we are meant to feel (“You started your career at age seven …”). It is the kind of dialogue that streaming-TV producers call “second-screen”, making sure you understand what’s unfolding while you’re watching the movie but also glancing at your phone. And, the score is overpowering, sometimes almost deafening, particularly in the scene where Hamed gets too excited calling on the promoter in his palatial home.

Performances and Key Moments

While the leads do their considerable utmost, their relationship never really ignites, and the major fight scenes are often anticlimactically cut short. A key scene is certainly when, provoked beyond endurance in the gym one day by the boxer as a misguided “old man”, Ingle in fact proposes to get in the ring and box him. Everyone in the gym is stunned and uneasy. In what way is this extremely unwise confrontation going to play out? How precisely the outcome? Surely the Prince is going to kill him? Alternatively will he sentimentally pull his punches? It’s not clear.

Bright Spots and Comedy

This isn’t to imply that there aren’t some nice jabs. Brosnan gets laughs when his character informs a reporter what he’s teaching the kids from his neighborhood: to oppose prejudice and when you meet a offender, “Punch him in the bollocks”. It’s funny too when the boxer fidgets at the ridiculous stunts the coach makes him do in the beginning: posing as the “beast from the Middle East”.

Plot and Conclusion

Regarding the rift, the movie shows this as being worsened by a tell-all book that the trainer is supposed to have written (a story element clearly adapted from prior material), and there is an intriguingly imagined final conversation – although the emotional tribute that the boxer is supposed to have paid to his mentor after his passing is merely referenced in the end titles, and not dramatised on film. There is engaging content in this film, but the blows fail to connect.

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