🔗 Share this article The Giant Film Analysis: Naseem Hamed Movie Starring Brosnan Lacks the Impact The movie boasts a talented cast, depicting the real-life tale of Irish boxing trainer Brendan Ingle, who guided a cheeky Yorkshire youth from Yemeni immigrant family. Known as Naseem Hamed, the fighter was coached to stand up to racist bullies and transformed into a media-friendly world champion in the 1990s. The trainer cultivated his showboating confidence and powerful punches, but after achieving wealth, the boxer turned against his coach, cutting him out and turning him into a blend of Falstaff and Danny Rose. Cast and Characters Pierce Brosnan portrays Ingle; El-Masry embodies the part of Hamed, and Stephens appears as the assertive promoter Warren, who recognized the goldmine that Ingle had discovered. Film’s Shortcomings However, the movie honestly lacks the fighter’s fancy footwork: the boxing sequences flow well, but the crucial story between them is consistently dull and monotonous. It lacks nuance or contrast in the depiction of the protagonist himself, and El-Masry, an otherwise outstanding performer, isn’t given the opportunity to display any subtlety or much of what might make his role really interesting – although he’s clearly been working out and looks very plausible in the boxing arena. Problems with Script and Sound The story is repeatedly burdened by utilitarian, expositional lines that inform you exactly what is going on and what we are meant to feel (“You started your career at age seven …”). It is the kind of dialogue that streaming-TV executives call “double-screen”, making sure you know what’s going on while you’re watching the film but also checking your phone. And, the score is overbearing, sometimes almost deafening, particularly in the scene where Hamed gets overexcited calling on Warren in his luxurious home. Performances and Key Moments While the leads do their very utmost, their relationship doesn’t quite comes to life, and the major fight scenes are often disappointingly truncated. A key moment is certainly when, provoked past his limit in the training facility one day by the boxer as a misguided “elder”, the trainer in fact proposes to get in the ring and box him. All present in the gym is stunned and uncomfortable. How exactly is this insanely risky standoff going to unfold? How precisely the outcome? Surely the Prince is going to kill him? Alternatively will he sentimentally hold back? It’s not clear. Bright Spots and Comedy That’s not to say that there aren’t some nice jabs. The actor elicits humor when Ingle tells a journalist what he’s instructing the kids from his neighborhood: to oppose prejudice and when you meet a paedophile, “Punch him in the groin”. Amusing too when Hamed squirms 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 falling out, the movie shows this as being exacerbated by a revealing publication that Ingle is allegedly authored (a story element clearly modified from another source), and there is an intriguingly imagined last discussion – although the heartfelt homage that Hamed is supposed to have given to Ingle after his death is merely mentioned in the closing credits, and not shown on film. Some engaging content here, but the blows fail to connect. The film screened at the festival and is in British and Irish theaters from 9 January.