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This film features a talented cast, telling the real-life tale of Irish boxing trainer Ingle, who mentored a brash Sheffield teenager from Yemeni migrant parents. Known as Naseem Hamed, the fighter was coached to confront prejudice and molded into a media-friendly world champion in the 1990s. Ingle cultivated his flamboyant confidence and lethal fists, but after achieving wealth, Hamed turned against his coach, cutting him out and making him a blend of Falstaff and Danny Rose.

Cast and Characters

Brosnan portrays Ingle; Amir El-Masry embodies the part of Hamed, and Toby Stephens is the assertive London promoter Frank Warren, who saw the potential that the coach had discovered.

Film’s Shortcomings

Yet, the movie honestly misses the Prince’s fancy footwork: the boxing sequences flow well, but the crucial story in between is repeatedly dull and one-note. It lacks nuance or light and shade in the depiction of Hamed himself, and the actor, an otherwise outstanding performer, doesn’t get the opportunity to display any subtlety or much of what might make his role truly engaging – although he’s clearly been training and looks very plausible in the ring.

Problems with Script and Sound

The story is often burdened by functional, expositional lines that tell you exactly what is happening and what we are meant to feel (“Your journey began your boxing journey at age seven …”). This is the sort of dialogue that streaming-TV producers call “double-screen”, making sure you know what’s going on while you’re viewing the movie but also checking your phone. And, the background music is overbearing, at times almost overwhelming, particularly in the moment where Hamed gets overexcited visiting the promoter in his palatial home.

Performances and Key Moments

Although the leads do their very utmost, their relationship never really ignites, and the big set-piece boxing moments are frequently disappointingly cut short. The most important scene is surely when, provoked past his limit in the training facility one day by Hamed as a misguided “elder”, the trainer actually proposes to step into the ring and fight him. Everyone in the gym is shocked and uneasy. How exactly is this extremely unwise confrontation going to play out? How precisely the outcome? Surely the champion is going to kill him? Or will he emotionally pull his punches? The resolution remains ambiguous.

Highlights and Humor

That’s not to say that there are no some good moments. The actor gets laughs when his character informs a journalist what he’s instructing the youths from his local community: to oppose bias and when you meet a paedophile, “Hit them in the groin”. Amusing too when the boxer fidgets at the ridiculous antics the coach makes him do in the early days: posing as the “beast from the Middle East”.

Plot and Conclusion

As for the rift, the film depicts this as being worsened by a tell-all publication that the trainer is allegedly authored (a story element clearly modified from prior material), and there is an intriguingly conceived last discussion – although the heartfelt homage that Hamed is supposed to have paid to Ingle after his death is only referenced in the closing credits, and not shown on screen. There is engaging content here, but the blows fail to connect.

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