🔗 Share this article

This film features a impressive ensemble, telling the true tale of coach Brendan Ingle, who guided a cheeky Yorkshire teenager from Middle Eastern migrant parents. Known as “Prince” Naseem Hamed, the youngster was taught to confront racist bullies and molded into a media-friendly world champion in the 1990s. The trainer cultivated his showboating arrogance and powerful punches, but after achieving wealth, the boxer betrayed his mentor, excluding him and turning him into a blend of John Falstaff and Danny Rose.

Performers and Roles

Brosnan plays Ingle; Amir El-Masry takes on the part of the prince, and Stephens is the assertive London promoter Warren, who recognized the goldmine that the coach had discovered.

Where the Movie Falls Short

Yet, the film honestly misses the fighter’s agility: the fight scenes flow well, but the all-important drama in between is consistently flat and monotonous. There is no nuance or light and shade in the portrayal of Hamed himself, and the actor, an otherwise outstanding performer, doesn’t get the chance to show any subtlety or much of what might make his character really interesting – although he’s clearly been training and looks very plausible in the boxing arena.

Problems with Script and Sound

The story is often lumbered with utilitarian, explanatory lines that inform you exactly what is happening and what we are supposed to be thinking (“Your journey began your boxing journey at age seven …”). This is the sort of dialogue that streaming-TV executives call “double-screen”, ensuring you understand what’s unfolding while you’re viewing the movie but also glancing at your phone. And, the background music is overpowering, at times nearly deafening, especially in the scene where the boxer gets too excited calling on the promoter in his luxurious home.

Performances and Key Moments

While El-Masry and Brosnan do their very utmost, their relationship never really comes to life, and the major fight scenes are often anticlimactically truncated. The most important moment is certainly when, goaded past his limit in the training facility one day by the boxer as a misguided “old man”, the trainer actually offers to get in the ring and fight him. All present in the gym is shocked and uneasy. How exactly is this extremely unwise confrontation going to unfold? How precisely the outcome? Certainly the champion is going to kill him? Alternatively will he sentimentally hold back? It’s not clear.

Highlights and Humor

That’s not to say that there aren’t some good moments. Brosnan elicits humor when his character tells a reporter what he’s instructing the kids from his neighborhood: to oppose prejudice and when you meet a offender, “Punch him in the bollocks”. Amusing too when Hamed fidgets at the ridiculous antics the coach makes him do in the beginning: acting like the “beast from the East”.

Storyline and Final Thoughts

As for the rift, the film shows this as being exacerbated by a tell-all book that the trainer is allegedly written (a story element evidently modified from another source), and there is an intriguingly conceived final conversation – although the heartfelt homage that Hamed is supposed to have paid to Ingle after his passing is merely mentioned in the end titles, and not shown on screen. Some interesting material in this film, but the blows don’t land.

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