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The movie boasts a talented cast, telling the real-life tale of Irish boxing trainer Brendan Ingle, who mentored a cheeky Yorkshire teenager from Middle Eastern migrant family. Known as “Prince” Naseem Hamed, the youngster was coached to confront racist bullies and molded into a media-friendly titleholder in the 1990s. The trainer nurtured his flamboyant confidence and powerful punches, but after achieving wealth, Hamed turned against his mentor, excluding him and making him a mix of Falstaff and Danny Rose.

Performers and Roles

Brosnan portrays Ingle; El-Masry takes on the part of Hamed, and Stephens appears as the bullish promoter Warren, who saw the goldmine that Ingle had uncovered.

Film’s Shortcomings

However, the movie honestly lacks the fighter’s fancy footwork: the fight scenes flow well, but the crucial story between them is consistently flat and one-note. It lacks nuance or light and shade in the portrayal of Hamed himself, and the actor, an otherwise outstanding performer, doesn’t get the opportunity to show any depth or much of what might make his character truly engaging – although he’s clearly been working out and looks very plausible in the ring.

Problems with Script and Sound

The drama is often burdened by functional, explanatory dialogue that tell you precisely what is happening and what we are meant to feel (“You started your boxing journey at age seven …”). This is the kind of dialogue that streaming-TV producers call “double-screen”, ensuring you know what’s going on while you’re watching the movie but also checking your phone. And, the background music is overbearing, sometimes nearly deafening, especially in the moment 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 utmost, their dynamic doesn’t quite comes to life, and the big set-piece fight scenes are often anticlimactically truncated. A key scene is certainly when, provoked past his limit in the gym one day by the boxer as a delusional “old man”, the trainer in fact offers to step into the ring and fight him. All present in the room is shocked and uncomfortable. How exactly is this extremely unwise standoff going to unfold? What will be the outcome? Surely the Prince is going to kill him? Or will he emotionally hold back? The resolution remains ambiguous.

Highlights and Humor

This isn’t to imply that there aren’t some nice jabs. Brosnan elicits humor when Ingle informs a reporter what he’s instructing the kids from his local community: to reject bias and when you encounter a offender, “Hit them in the groin”. It’s funny too when the boxer squirms at the ridiculous stunts the coach makes him do in the early days: acting like the “beast from the Middle East”.

Plot and Conclusion

Regarding the rift, the film depicts this as being worsened by a tell-all publication that Ingle is allegedly written (a story element evidently modified from prior material), and there is an interestingly imagined last discussion – although the heartfelt homage that Hamed is supposed to have given to Ingle after his death is merely mentioned in the end titles, and not shown on screen. There is interesting material here, but the punches fail to connect.

The film screened at the London film festival and is available in British and Irish theaters from 9 January.