The movie boasts a impressive cast, telling the true story of coach Ingle, who mentored a brash Yorkshire youth from Yemeni immigrant parents. Dubbed Naseem Hamed, the youngster was coached to confront prejudice and molded into a media-friendly world champion in the 1990s. Ingle cultivated his flamboyant arrogance and lethal fists, but after achieving wealth, the boxer betrayed his mentor, excluding him and making him a blend of John Falstaff and Danny Rose.
Brosnan plays Ingle; El-Masry takes on the part of the prince, and Stephens appears as the bullish London promoter Warren, who recognized the goldmine that the coach had discovered.
Yet, the film honestly misses the fighter’s agility: the fight scenes run smoothly, but the all-important story between them is consistently flat and one-note. It lacks subtlety or contrast in the portrayal of the protagonist himself, and the actor, an otherwise outstanding performer, doesn’t get the opportunity to display any subtlety or much of what might make his character really interesting – although he’s clearly been working out and appears convincing in the ring.
The story is repeatedly burdened by utilitarian, expositional dialogue that inform you exactly what is going on and what we are meant to feel (“Your journey began your career at age seven …”). This is the kind of dialogue that digital producers call “second-screen”, ensuring you understand what’s unfolding while you’re watching the film but also glancing at your phone. And, the score is overpowering, sometimes almost overwhelming, particularly in the moment where the boxer gets overexcited visiting Warren in his palatial residence.
Although El-Masry and Brosnan do their considerable best, their dynamic doesn’t quite comes to life, and the big set-piece boxing moments are often anticlimactically truncated. The most important scene is certainly when, goaded beyond endurance in the training facility one day by Hamed as a misguided “elder”, the trainer actually offers to step into the ring and fight him. Everyone in the room is shocked and uncomfortable. How exactly is this extremely risky standoff going to play out? What will be the ending? Certainly the champion is going to defeat him? Or will he sentimentally hold back? It’s not clear.
That’s not to say that there are no some nice jabs. The actor elicits humor when Ingle informs a reporter what he’s instructing the youths from his neighborhood: to oppose prejudice and when you encounter a offender, “Hit them in the bollocks”. Amusing too when Hamed fidgets at the silly antics the coach makes him do in the early days: acting like the “monster from the Middle East”.
As for the falling out, the film shows this as being exacerbated by a tell-all publication that Ingle is supposed to have authored (a plot point evidently modified from prior material), and there is an intriguingly imagined final conversation – although the heartfelt homage that the boxer is supposed to have paid to his mentor after his passing is merely mentioned in the end titles, and not shown on screen. There is engaging content here, but the blows don’t land.
The film screened at the London film festival and is in UK and Irish theaters from 9 January.
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