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This film features a impressive cast, depicting the true story of Irish boxing trainer Ingle, who mentored a cheeky Yorkshire teenager from Middle Eastern immigrant family. Known as “Prince” Naseem Hamed, the fighter was coached to confront racist bullies and molded into a media-friendly world champion in the 1990s. The trainer cultivated his showboating confidence and lethal fists, but after becoming rich, the boxer betrayed his mentor, cutting him out and making him a mix of John Falstaff and Broadway Danny Rose.

Performers and Roles

Brosnan portrays the trainer; El-Masry embodies the part of Hamed, and Stephens is the bullish London promoter Frank Warren, who recognized the potential that the coach had uncovered.

Film’s Shortcomings

Yet, the movie frankly lacks the fighter’s agility: the fight scenes 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 excellent talent, isn’t given the opportunity to show any subtlety or much of what might make his character really interesting – although he’s obviously been training and looks very plausible in the boxing arena.

Problems with Script and Sound

The story is repeatedly lumbered with functional, explanatory dialogue that tell you exactly what is going on and what we are meant to feel (“You started your career at seven years old …”). It is the kind of dialogue that digital producers call “double-screen”, ensuring you understand what’s unfolding while you’re watching the movie but also glancing at your device. And, the score is overbearing, at times almost overwhelming, especially in the moment where Hamed gets overexcited calling on Warren in his luxurious residence.

Acting and Pivotal Scenes

While El-Masry and Brosnan do their considerable best, their dynamic doesn’t quite comes to life, and the big set-piece fight scenes are often anticlimactically truncated. The most important moment is certainly when, provoked beyond endurance in the training facility one day by Hamed as a misguided “elder”, the trainer actually proposes to get in the ring and fight him. Everyone in the gym is stunned and uncomfortable. How exactly is this extremely risky confrontation going to play out? What will be the ending? Certainly the Prince 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. The actor gets laughs when his character tells a reporter what he’s instructing the youths from his neighborhood: to reject prejudice and when you meet a offender, “Punch him in the bollocks”. It’s funny too when Hamed squirms at the silly antics Ingle makes him do in the beginning: acting like the “monster from the Middle East”.

Storyline and Final Thoughts

Regarding the rift, the movie shows this as being exacerbated by a revealing book that the trainer is allegedly authored (a story element evidently adapted from another source), and there is an intriguingly conceived final conversation – however the emotional tribute that the boxer is supposed to have given to Ingle after his passing is merely referenced in the closing credits, and not dramatised on film. There is engaging content here, but the blows don’t land.

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