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The movie boasts a impressive ensemble, telling the real-life story of Irish boxing trainer Brendan Ingle, who guided a brash Yorkshire teenager from Middle Eastern migrant family. Dubbed Naseem Hamed, the fighter was taught to stand up to prejudice and transformed into a media-friendly titleholder in the late 90s. The trainer nurtured his showboating arrogance and lethal fists, but after becoming rich, Hamed betrayed his coach, excluding him and turning him into a blend of John Falstaff and Broadway Danny Rose.

Cast and Characters

Pierce Brosnan plays the trainer; Amir El-Masry takes on the part of the prince, and Toby Stephens appears as the bullish promoter Warren, who saw the potential that Ingle had discovered.

Film’s Shortcomings

However, the movie frankly lacks the Prince’s agility: the boxing sequences flow well, but the all-important drama between them is consistently dull and one-note. There is no subtlety or light and shade in the depiction of the protagonist himself, and the actor, an otherwise outstanding performer, isn’t given the chance to show any subtlety or much of what might make his role really interesting – although he’s clearly been working out and looks very plausible in the ring.

Dialogue and Music Issues

The story is repeatedly lumbered with functional, explanatory dialogue that inform you exactly what is going on and what we are meant to feel (“Your journey began your career at seven years old …”). It is the sort of dialogue that digital executives call “double-screen”, ensuring you know what’s going on while you’re watching the film but also checking your phone. And, the score is overbearing, sometimes nearly overwhelming, especially in the moment where Hamed gets overexcited visiting Warren in his palatial home.

Acting and Pivotal Scenes

While El-Masry and Brosnan do their very utmost, their dynamic never really comes to life, and the big set-piece fight scenes are frequently disappointingly truncated. A key scene is surely when, provoked past his limit in the training facility one day by the boxer as a delusional “old man”, the trainer in fact proposes to get in the ring and fight him. Everyone in the gym is stunned and uneasy. How exactly is this insanely unwise standoff going to play out? What will be the ending? Surely the champion is going to defeat him? Alternatively will he emotionally hold back? It’s not clear.

Highlights and Humor

This isn’t to imply that there aren’t some nice jabs. Brosnan elicits humor when Ingle tells a journalist what he’s instructing the kids from his local community: to reject bias and when you encounter a offender, “Punch him in the bollocks”. Amusing too when Hamed squirms at the ridiculous antics the coach makes him do in the early days: acting like the “monster from the Middle East”.

Plot and Conclusion

As for the rift, the film shows this as being exacerbated by a tell-all book that the trainer is supposed to have written (a story element clearly adapted from another source), and there is an intriguingly conceived last discussion – however the emotional tribute that Hamed is supposed to have given to Ingle after his death is only referenced in the end titles, and not shown on screen. There is interesting material here, but the blows don’t land.

Giant was shown at the festival and is available in UK and Irish theaters from 9 January.