Giant Film Analysis: Naseem Hamed Movie Starring Brosnan Lacks the Impact

This film features a talented ensemble, telling the true story of coach Brendan Ingle, who mentored a brash Sheffield teenager from Middle Eastern migrant family. Dubbed Naseem Hamed, the youngster was coached to confront prejudice and transformed into a celebrity titleholder in the 1990s. The trainer nurtured his showboating arrogance and powerful punches, but after becoming rich, Hamed turned against his mentor, excluding him and making him a mix of John Falstaff and Danny Rose.

Cast and Characters

Pierce Brosnan portrays Ingle; Amir El-Masry takes on the role of the prince, and Stephens appears as the assertive promoter Warren, who saw the potential that Ingle had uncovered.

Where the Movie Falls Short

However, the film frankly misses the fighter’s agility: the boxing sequences run smoothly, but the crucial story in between is consistently dull and monotonous. There is no subtlety or contrast in the depiction of the protagonist himself, and El-Masry, an otherwise outstanding performer, isn’t given the chance to display any depth or much of what might make his role really interesting – although he’s clearly been working out and appears convincing in the ring.

Dialogue and Music Issues

The story is repeatedly lumbered with utilitarian, explanatory lines that inform you exactly what is happening and what we are meant to feel (“You started your boxing journey at seven years old …”). It is the kind of dialogue that streaming-TV producers call “second-screen”, making sure you know what’s going on while you’re viewing the movie but also checking your device. Additionally, the background music is overpowering, sometimes almost deafening, especially in the moment where Hamed gets too excited visiting Warren in his luxurious home.

Performances and Key Moments

Although the leads do their very utmost, their dynamic doesn’t quite ignites, and the major fight scenes are frequently disappointingly truncated. A key scene is surely when, provoked beyond endurance in the training facility one day by the boxer as a misguided “old man”, the trainer actually proposes to get in the ring and fight him. Everyone in the gym is shocked and uneasy. In what way is this extremely unwise confrontation going to unfold? How precisely the ending? Certainly the champion is going to defeat him? Alternatively will he sentimentally pull his punches? It’s not clear.

Highlights and Humor

This isn’t to imply 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 neighborhood: to oppose prejudice and when you meet a offender, “Punch him in the bollocks”. Amusing too when the boxer fidgets at the ridiculous antics Ingle makes him do in the early days: posing as the “beast from the East”.

Plot and Conclusion

As for the falling out, the film shows this as being exacerbated by a revealing publication that the trainer is allegedly written (a story element evidently adapted from prior material), and there is an interestingly conceived last discussion – although the emotional tribute that the boxer is supposed to have paid to Ingle after his passing is merely mentioned in the closing credits, and not dramatised on film. There is interesting material in this film, but the blows fail to connect.

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