RING BATTLE

BROSNAN TINKERS WITH TRAINER CHARACTER FOR WORLD BOXING GENRE

by PETER THOMAS BUSCH

Pierce Brosnan draws up the character of a real life boxing trainer that ultimately becomes a bit better than the movie cliché.

Brendan Ingle takes kids off the street and puts them to work in the boxing ring where they can learn to control their power instead of wasting that energy toward becoming vandalizing juvenile delinquents.

Ingle spots Naseem Hamed fighting off his school yard bullies a bit of time before he turns up in his boxing gym. Naseem quickly grows up though, and begins to win major boxing matches while also winning over the storyline as the main narrative device becomes his boxing prowess.

Amir El-Masry portrays Naseem as a big showboat inside and outside of the ring who actually follows up his bravado with championship victories over all of the competition. The narrative jumps from boxing match to boxing match, and the trainer and the boxer reveal, in little increments between fights, the dynamic in their lifelong relationship.

El-Masry shows how Naseem always had lots of confidence, but as he obtains recognition as a world class boxer, he forgets where he came from and begins to disrespect his lifelong friend.

Director Rowan Athale brings together the calm and deliberate world of the trainer, created by Brosnan, together with the brash hubris of a professional athlete winning big, while knowing he has the skills to be unbeatable and win even bigger.

The team’s fight promoter works quietly in the near background, but Toby Stephens, as Frank Warren, still gets some screen time ringside at the main boxing events – and on the telephone updating everyone on the deals he has managed to put together just as the deals become realized. Warren works the magic all around by making the future payday conditional on Naseem winning another fight.

The boxer has his family around him for emotional support outside of the boxing gym, such as his brother who takes on more and more of a business partner role, while the trainer has half of his whole life invested in the gym and the other half invested in bringing up his best prospect to world class fighting form.

Katherine Blyton has a few scenes as the supportive, unconditionally loving wife of Brendan. The camera otherwise follows Brosnan around wherever possible catching his character development in narrow hallways and when gushing boxing wisdom from the ring corner, between rounds.

The story takes place in Sheffield, England, and the boxing genre roles out that empathy for the characters that occurs from showing, sometimes in granular detail, the gritty world where the more successful boxers start out from, such as nowhere on the streets of a tough city, to become the most celebrated champions on the world stage.

The boxing story as part of the boxing film genre becomes a bit predictable in that this boxer wins one fight after another. The camera though is also there to show the relationship between two similar personalities presented to the public differently for the different roles of trainer and boxer.

Giant may not be the greatest boxing film ever made, but the characters, and the relationship between them, are interesting details that are interesting enough to watch out for, in between and around the showboating going on in the boxing ring.

Giant is streaming on Paramount+ in Canada.