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This film features a talented ensemble, depicting the real-life tale of Irish boxing trainer Ingle, who mentored a cheeky Sheffield teenager from Yemeni immigrant parents. Dubbed “Prince” Naseem Hamed, the youngster was taught to stand up to prejudice and transformed into a celebrity titleholder in the 1990s. Ingle nurtured his showboating confidence and lethal fists, but after becoming rich, the boxer turned against his coach, cutting him out and turning him into a blend of Falstaff and Broadway Danny Rose.

Performers and Roles

Pierce Brosnan plays the trainer; Amir El-Masry takes on the role of the prince, and Toby Stephens is the bullish London promoter Frank Warren, who saw the potential that Ingle had discovered.

Film’s Shortcomings

Yet, the film honestly misses the fighter’s agility: the fight scenes run smoothly, but the all-important drama in between is consistently dull and one-note. It lacks nuance or light and shade in the portrayal of Hamed himself, and El-Masry, an otherwise outstanding performer, isn’t given the chance to display any depth or much of what might make his character truly engaging – even though he’s obviously been training and looks very plausible in the ring.

Dialogue and Music Issues

The drama is repeatedly lumbered with functional, expositional lines that tell you precisely what is happening and what we are supposed to be thinking (“You started your career at seven years old …”). It is the sort of dialogue that streaming-TV producers call “second-screen”, ensuring you understand what’s going on while you’re watching the movie but also checking your phone. And, the score is overbearing, at times almost deafening, particularly in the scene where the boxer gets too excited calling on the promoter in his luxurious residence.

Performances and Key Moments

Although El-Masry and Brosnan do their considerable utmost, their relationship never really comes to life, and the major boxing moments are frequently anticlimactically truncated. A key moment is certainly when, provoked beyond endurance in the training facility one day by the boxer as a misguided “elder”, the trainer in fact proposes to step into the ring and fight him. Everyone in the gym is shocked and uneasy. How exactly is this insanely unwise standoff going to play out? What will be the outcome? Certainly the champion is going to kill him? Or will he emotionally hold back? It’s not clear.

Bright Spots and Comedy

This isn’t to imply that there aren’t some nice jabs. Brosnan elicits humor when his character informs a reporter what he’s instructing the youths from his neighborhood: to oppose bias and when you meet a paedophile, “Punch him in the groin”. It’s funny too when Hamed fidgets at the silly antics the coach makes him do in the beginning: posing as the “beast from the East”.

Plot and Conclusion

As for the falling out, the movie depicts this as being worsened by a tell-all publication that Ingle is supposed to have written (a plot point evidently adapted from another source), and there is an interestingly conceived last discussion – however the emotional tribute that Hamed is reportedly given to his mentor after his death is only referenced in the end titles, and not dramatised on screen. There is engaging content here, but the punches fail to connect.

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