The Giant Film Analysis: Prince Naseem Movie Featuring Brosnan Misses the Impact

This film boasts a impressive cast, depicting the true story of Irish boxing trainer Brendan Ingle, who guided a cheeky Yorkshire youth from Middle Eastern migrant parents. Dubbed Naseem Hamed, the youngster was taught to stand up to prejudice and molded into a celebrity world champion in the 1990s. The trainer cultivated his flamboyant confidence and powerful punches, but after becoming rich, Hamed betrayed his coach, cutting him out and making him a blend of Falstaff and Broadway Danny Rose.

Cast and Characters

Pierce Brosnan portrays the trainer; Amir El-Masry embodies the part of the prince, and Stephens appears as the bullish London promoter Warren, who recognized the goldmine that Ingle had discovered.

Film’s Shortcomings

Yet, the movie honestly lacks the Prince’s fancy footwork: the fight scenes run smoothly, but the all-important drama between them is repeatedly flat and monotonous. It lacks subtlety or light and shade in the portrayal of the protagonist himself, and the actor, an otherwise excellent talent, isn’t given the chance to show any depth or much of what might make his role truly engaging – although he’s clearly been working out and looks very plausible in the boxing arena.

Dialogue and Music Issues

The story is often lumbered with functional, expositional lines that inform you exactly what is going on and what we are meant to feel (“You started your boxing journey at seven years old …”). It is the sort of dialogue that digital producers call “second-screen”, making sure you know what’s unfolding while you’re viewing the film but also glancing at your phone. Additionally, the score is overpowering, sometimes nearly deafening, especially in the scene where the boxer gets too excited calling on Warren in his palatial home.

Acting and Pivotal Scenes

While El-Masry and Brosnan do their very utmost, their relationship doesn’t quite comes to life, and the big set-piece boxing moments are frequently anticlimactically cut short. The most important moment is certainly when, provoked past his limit in the gym one day by the boxer as a misguided “old man”, Ingle actually offers to get in the ring and box him. Everyone in the room is shocked and uncomfortable. How exactly is this insanely unwise confrontation going to play out? What will be the ending? Surely the champion is going to defeat him? Or will he emotionally pull his punches? The resolution remains ambiguous.

Highlights and Humor

This isn’t to imply that there are no some nice jabs. Brosnan gets laughs when Ingle tells a reporter what he’s instructing the kids from his neighborhood: to reject prejudice and when you meet a paedophile, “Hit them in the bollocks”. Amusing too when Hamed fidgets at the silly stunts the coach makes him do in the beginning: acting like the “monster from the East”.

Plot and Conclusion

As for the rift, the movie shows this as being exacerbated by a tell-all book that the trainer is supposed to have written (a plot point clearly modified from another source), and there is an intriguingly conceived final conversation – although the emotional tribute that the boxer is supposed to have paid to Ingle after his death is only referenced in the end titles, and not dramatised on film. Some interesting material here, but the punches don’t land.

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