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The movie features a impressive cast, depicting the real-life tale of Irish boxing trainer Ingle, who mentored a brash Yorkshire youth from Yemeni immigrant family. Dubbed “Prince” Naseem Hamed, the fighter was coached to confront racist bullies and molded into a media-friendly world champion in the late 90s. The trainer cultivated his showboating confidence and lethal fists, but after achieving wealth, Hamed turned against his mentor, excluding him and turning him into a mix of John Falstaff and Broadway Danny Rose.

Cast and Characters

Pierce Brosnan plays the trainer; Amir El-Masry embodies the role of the prince, and Stephens is the bullish London promoter Frank Warren, who recognized the potential that the coach had discovered.

Film’s Shortcomings

Yet, the movie honestly misses the fighter’s fancy footwork: the fight scenes flow well, but the crucial story in between is repeatedly dull and one-note. There is no subtlety or light and shade in the portrayal of the protagonist himself, and El-Masry, an otherwise excellent talent, isn’t given the chance to show any subtlety or much of what might make his character really interesting – even though he’s clearly been training and appears convincing in the boxing arena.

Dialogue and Music Issues

The drama is often lumbered with functional, explanatory lines that tell you exactly what is going on and what we are supposed to be thinking (“You started your boxing journey at seven years old …”). It is the sort of dialogue that streaming-TV executives call “double-screen”, making sure you understand what’s going on while you’re watching the movie but also glancing at your device. Additionally, the score is overbearing, sometimes nearly overwhelming, especially in the scene where the boxer gets too excited calling on Warren in his luxurious home.

Performances and Key Moments

While El-Masry and Brosnan do their very best, their relationship never really ignites, and the major fight scenes are frequently anticlimactically cut short. A key scene is surely when, provoked past his limit in the gym one day by Hamed as a delusional “elder”, the trainer actually offers to get in the ring and box him. Everyone in the gym is stunned and uncomfortable. How exactly is this insanely unwise confrontation going to unfold? What will be the ending? Certainly the Prince is going to kill him? Or will he sentimentally hold back? It’s not clear.

Highlights and Humor

That’s not to say that there aren’t some nice jabs. The actor elicits humor when Ingle tells a reporter what he’s instructing the kids from his local community: to reject bias and when you encounter a offender, “Punch him in the groin”. It’s funny too when Hamed fidgets at the silly antics the coach makes him do in the early days: posing as the “monster from the Middle East”.

Storyline and Final Thoughts

As for the rift, the movie depicts this as being worsened by a tell-all book that Ingle is allegedly written (a plot point evidently adapted from another source), and there is an interestingly imagined last discussion – however the heartfelt homage that the boxer is reportedly paid to his mentor after his passing is merely referenced in the closing credits, and not dramatised on screen. There is interesting material here, but the blows fail to connect.

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