🔗 Share this article

This film features a impressive cast, telling the real-life story of Irish boxing trainer Ingle, who guided a brash Yorkshire teenager from Yemeni immigrant family. Known as “Prince” Naseem Hamed, the youngster was coached to confront racist bullies and transformed into a celebrity titleholder in the 1990s. The trainer cultivated his flamboyant 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.

Performers and Roles

Pierce Brosnan portrays Ingle; Amir El-Masry takes on the role of the prince, and Stephens appears as the bullish promoter Warren, who saw the potential that Ingle had uncovered.

Where the Movie Falls Short

However, the film honestly misses the Prince’s agility: the boxing sequences flow well, but the all-important drama in between is repeatedly flat and one-note. It lacks nuance or light and shade in the portrayal of the protagonist himself, and the actor, an otherwise excellent talent, doesn’t get the chance to show any depth or much of what might make his role really interesting – although he’s clearly been training and looks very plausible in the boxing arena.

Problems with Script and Sound

The drama is repeatedly burdened by functional, explanatory dialogue that tell you precisely what is happening and what we are meant to feel (“Your journey began your career at age seven …”). This is the kind of dialogue that digital executives call “second-screen”, ensuring you understand what’s unfolding while you’re viewing the movie but also checking your phone. Additionally, the background music is overpowering, at times almost deafening, particularly in the scene where the boxer gets overexcited visiting Warren in his palatial home.

Performances and Key Moments

While El-Masry and Brosnan do their very best, their dynamic never really ignites, and the major boxing moments are frequently disappointingly cut short. The most important scene is surely when, provoked beyond endurance in the training facility one day by the boxer as a delusional “old man”, Ingle in fact proposes to get in the ring and fight him. Everyone in the room is stunned and uncomfortable. How exactly is this extremely risky confrontation going to unfold? How precisely the outcome? Surely the Prince is going to defeat him? Or will he sentimentally pull his punches? The resolution remains ambiguous.

Highlights and Humor

That’s not to say that there aren’t some good moments. Brosnan elicits humor when his character informs a journalist what he’s teaching the kids from his local community: to oppose bias and when you meet a offender, “Punch him in the bollocks”. Amusing too when the boxer squirms at the ridiculous stunts Ingle makes him do in the early days: acting like the “beast from the East”.

Storyline and Final Thoughts

As for the falling out, the film shows this as being worsened by a tell-all publication that the trainer is supposed to have authored (a plot point clearly modified from another source), and there is an interestingly conceived final conversation – however the heartfelt homage that Hamed is supposed to have paid to Ingle after his passing is merely referenced in the closing credits, and not shown on film. Some interesting material in this film, but the punches fail to connect.

The film was shown at the festival and is in British and Irish cinemas from 9 January.