Movie review: Giant (2026)
The name's Hamed. Naseem Hamed.
Giant is the story of Brendan Ingle, an old Irishman and ex-fighter who runs a boxing gym in Sheffield, and his ward, the brash British-Yemeni youth Naseem Hamed. Stop me if you've heard this one before. On second thought, maybe you haven't. There aren't many documentaries on Hamed, he hasn't written an autobiography or even gone to the trouble of having one ghostwritten for him. If you missed the psychodrama unfolding in realtime in the 1990s, the tale is now a wide-release melodrama starring former James Bond and Mamma Mia star, Brosnan, alongside Amir El-Masry, Egyptian-British actor.
The first thing that'll often jump over the ring at you in a biopic is how much or little the actor resembles the real deal. El-Masry has a believable Yorkshire accent and he's clearly carefully studied the facial expressions of Hamed, as he effortlessly mugs to the camera like the Prince reincarnated. Two child actors play younger versions of Hamed at age 7 and 12, and much like in reality, Hamed becomes less charming as he grows older.
Folkore tells us that Ingle sees a young boy running from schoolyard bullies, before later running into the boy's mother, who asks him to teach her sons to fight so they can protect themselves. Ingle takes the young lad under his wing and promises he'll be a star. The price? 25%. Of everything. On-screen, even a twelve year old Hamed can see the evergreen boxing perspective that cutting people in is a bum deal. Incredibly, it's an exchange they had in real life.
![In his St Thomas’s Club gym, in Newman Road, Sheffield, among his professional boxers, Brendan’s new protege is Naseem Hamed. “I saw him in the school yard. The other kids couldn’t touch him. Better than Bomber [Herol Graham] at his age.” He has been winning everything in sight. “The other night in the car on the way back from some boxing, I said to him. ‘You and me are going to make a lot of money. You’re 12 now,’ I said. ‘Let’s go on a few years and imagine what might happen. You’re 18, so what are you going to do?’ “He says, ‘I’m going pro with you.’ “‘Right,’ I said. ‘Your first fight. You’re on £400, and I get 25 per cent. How much do you get and how much do I get?’ “‘You’re on £100. I’m on £300,’ he said. “‘All right,’ I said. ‘Let’s go on. You’re 20, you’re boxing for a British title. I’ve spent 12 years on you. You are on four grand. I get a thousand, you get three thousand. What do you reckon to that?’ “‘It’s a lot of money giving you a thousand pounds, Brendan,’ he says to me. “So I said: ‘Aye, all right, let’s go on another four years. We’re in Las Vegas. You’re in one corner in a world title fight. You’re 24. Sixteen years I’ve spent on you. What do you reckon to that?’” “‘Fantastic, Brendan.’” “‘You’re being paid £200,000.’” “‘Great.’” “‘How much are you on?’” “‘£150,000.’” “‘How much am I on?’” “‘Fifty… oh, I don’t agree with that, Brendan,’ he says, ‘fifty thousand pounds is a lot of money’.” “I said: ‘Get out of the car, you little bastard, I’ve just spent 16 years on you’.”](https://prizefighting.org/content/images/2026/01/image-1.png)
The film largely sticks to the publicly-available record. One where Hamed pisses off practically everyone he meets. 'It's no good being a Muslim on a Friday and a bastard the rest of the week' is an all-time Ingle quote which sadly doesn't make the big screen. Maybe it'd make for too good of a reaction image or meme. Then again it's not like the film shies away from engaging racial commentary. Ok, yes, the National Front exist and 'ain't no black in Union Jack' was/is a catchprase, but the two-dozenth time that Hamed is called 'paki' it felt so gratuitous that it made me think of that Jack Johnson comic brimming with slurs.
A few years back cookie-cutter sitcom creator Chuck Lorre made a series called 'United States of Al', about an Afghani who worked as an interpreter during the two-decade military occupation of his country before moving to Suburbia, U.S.A. for formulaic hijinks. It starred Indian South-African actor Adhir Kalyan and there was some discussion at the time about authentic representation. I'm neither Arab nor Egyptian and it's only an opinion, but El-Masry is unmissably lighter-skinned than not only the real-life Hamed, but the two younger actors as well. Not a huge knock, it just doesn't help with the verisimilitude is all. Further demands that you suspend your disbelief occur whenever El-Masry, playing a scrawny featherweight, takes off his shirt to reveal the build of a light-heavyweight.
He's doing the best with the material he has but El-Masry doesn't get to flex much depth. Hamed and Ingle have an acrimonious split. Each man feels that his own contributions have been underappreciated and the other's have been oversold. Hamed claimed his boxing abilites were a blessing from a higher power. He could've walked into any gym in England and become a champion. Ingle trained hundreds of fighters before Hamed, none of them never made it, did they? Well, Herol 'Bomber' Graham is skulking about in the first act, but why he falls out with Ingle is never really explained. What exactly Ingle teaches Hamed is also brushed past, he's a natural from the moment he walks in the gym, and a scene where he explains he'll teach the boy a fifth way to fight left me wondering if had a lapse in concentration during the first four.
Maybe it was left on the cutting room so Toby Stephens (the antagonist in 2001's Die Another Day opposite Brosnan) could have more time to play a different villain, boxing promoter Frank Warren. Sometimes I'll listen to Warren interviews and think to myself, as I do with 50 Cent, 'I can see why somebody disliked him so much that he ended up shot.' Stephens captures that essence as he rambles on about the 1990s and lads mags and wealth and money. Twice he has a line about "old blokes in shit suits" not understanding the times they're living in, twice I wondered if this was a scathing satire on the now 73 year old Warren.
At times, writer and director Rowan Athale tries to keep things light, both in tone and with refreshingly colourful visuals. One montage scene playing out in newsprint aesthetics was very stylish but the broad stokes of substance are immutable. A book comes out where Ingle reads Hamed the riot act. In real life, the book was written by a journalist (derogatory) who extensively interviewed both men. In the movie, it's heavily implied to be a curiously unshown autobiography. Hamed and Ingle's relationship frays as a result of the dirty laundry being aired. In fiction, Ingle can't take it anymore and leaves almost immediately. In fact, they fell out and made up several times over a period of month/years, and Ingle can be seen giving corner instructions to a thoroughly uninterested Hamed as he fails to close the show in his second fight stateside.
This movie isn't interested in exploring questions like 'What is the appeal of Prince Naseem Hamed's boxing career?' or anything beyond surface-level allusions to his faith because this is not his story. His legacy will be flashy highlight reels and flashier, increasingly extravagant, ringwalks. You wouldn't get that from this movie. And Brendan Ingle's story wears thin quickly. In one scene, Ingle, Hamed, and Hamed's brothers are in the editing suite for an overrunning feature documentary on the fighter and they argue about cutting Ingle's introduction. 'Boxing is not a team sport', Riath Hamed (Arian Nik) coldly tells us. Ingle fires back that people like the surrounding characters and lore, which, in an age where boxing trainers are no longer permanent fixtures or even good for a quote, was the most sincere and needed message of the movie.
Brosnan in the final scene is a tour de force. His performance was worth the price of admission alone. It's Frankenstein calling out his creation for being a dick and the monster responding by pointing out that he was made to be this way. Except the conversation is another fiction. A 'what if?' that never was. This is not Rocky. It's not a feel-good story. I can't even be woke and call it a white saviour story. Both men are hurt in the end. The intertitles at the end tells us they never reconcile. It's like if Titanic ended with Jack and Rose disappearing into the water as soon as the ship started sinking followed by a text dump that spells out "They both drowned and never got to say 'I love you.'" Surely there had to be more to this than just a bunch of stuff happening?
Though Angelo Dundee, Eddie Futch, Cus D'Amato, Chappie Blackburn, and Manny Steward were giants, it was rightfully their fighters that basked in unobstructed sunlight. A more daring movie would've made Hamed an outright anti-hero in the mold of Yabuki Joe and zeroed in on how his ego negatively affected those around him. (I think Ingle's wife had more lines/scenes than the rest of Hamed's family combined.) Or reduced Hamed's role in the narrative so there'd be space to find out why things ended badly with 'Bomber' Graham, Mickey Duff, & Hamed, and what Ingle learned or what differed with later figures such as Kell Brook. Is there a more played out angle in modern times than 'money has downsides'? Where's the audience surrogate to knock the main characters down several pegs for being so obnoxious? It would've at least set the foundation for introspection or growth for the leads. Or catharsis for the viewer.
The pair made lots of money and all it cost them was 100% of a father-and-son bond neither of them seemingly valued. There's no resolution or deeper meaning to the preceding drama. And maybe there never will be. You'll likely hear the story again from one of the horse's mouths as a documentary series produced by Marky Mark Wahlberg is reportedly still on the way. It needs to be told again because as things stand, Ingle is paradoxically faultless, affable, sated, and bitter to the grave.
Final Review Scores
In a poem Ingle liked: The Vine and The Goat
In a sentence: Not enough suffering to be a compelling drama and not enough joy to be an enjoyable watch.
In a number: 5.62
In an emoji: 🗡️
In a NFL team: The New York Giants