Giant Review: Prince Naseem Biopic Featuring Brosnan Lacks the Impact

The movie features a talented cast, telling the true tale of Irish boxing trainer Brendan Ingle, who mentored a brash Sheffield teenager from Middle Eastern immigrant family. Dubbed “Prince” Naseem Hamed, the fighter was coached to stand up to racist bullies and molded into a celebrity world champion in the 1990s. The trainer nurtured his flamboyant arrogance and lethal fists, but after achieving wealth, Hamed turned against his coach, cutting him out and turning him into a blend of John Falstaff and Danny Rose.

Performers and Roles

Brosnan portrays the trainer; Amir El-Masry embodies the role of the prince, and Toby Stephens is the bullish promoter Warren, who recognized the potential that Ingle had uncovered.

Where the Movie Falls Short

However, the movie frankly misses the Prince’s agility: the boxing sequences run smoothly, but the all-important drama between them is repeatedly flat and one-note. There is no nuance or contrast in the portrayal of Hamed himself, and the actor, an otherwise excellent talent, doesn’t get the chance to show any subtlety or much of what might make his role really interesting – even though he’s clearly been training and looks very plausible in the boxing arena.

Dialogue and Music Issues

The story is repeatedly lumbered with utilitarian, expositional dialogue that inform you exactly what is happening and what we are supposed to be thinking (“You started your career at seven years old …”). This is the kind of script that streaming-TV producers call “second-screen”, making sure you know what’s going on while you’re viewing the movie but also glancing at your device. And, the score is overbearing, at times almost deafening, especially in the scene where the boxer gets overexcited visiting the promoter in his luxurious home.

Performances and Key Moments

Although the leads do their considerable utmost, their relationship never really comes to life, and the big set-piece boxing moments are frequently anticlimactically truncated. The most important moment is surely when, goaded past his limit in the training facility one day by Hamed as a misguided “old man”, the trainer actually proposes to step into the ring and box him. Everyone in the gym is shocked and uncomfortable. How exactly is this extremely unwise confrontation going to play out? How precisely the outcome? Certainly the Prince is going to defeat him? Alternatively will he sentimentally hold back? The resolution remains ambiguous.

Bright Spots and Comedy

That’s not to say that there are no some nice jabs. The actor elicits humor when Ingle tells a reporter what he’s teaching the kids from his neighborhood: to oppose prejudice and when you meet a offender, “Hit them in the bollocks”. Amusing too when the boxer fidgets at the silly stunts the coach makes him do in the early days: acting like the “monster from the East”.

Storyline and Final Thoughts

As for the rift, the movie shows this as being worsened by a tell-all book that Ingle is supposed to have written (a plot point evidently adapted from another source), and there is an intriguingly conceived final conversation – however the heartfelt homage that Hamed is reportedly paid to his mentor after his passing is only referenced in the end titles, and not dramatised on film. Some engaging content here, but the punches fail to connect.

Giant was shown at the London film festival and is in British and Irish theaters from January 9.