In the red corner, a cocksure boxing star who took on the world. In the blue, his loyal trainer – the man who made him. The Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah opened on Thursday with Giant, the first biopic of Prince Naseem Hamed, the British Muslim boxing champion who held multiple featherweight titles between 1995 and 2000.
It’s a vibrant look at Hamed’s rise and his eventual fallout with his trainer, Brendan Ingle – played with total command by former James Bond star Pierce Brosnan.
For director Rowan Athale, the project feels like a dream come true. The British-Indian filmmaker grew up in Barnsley, in the north of England – not far from Sheffield, where Hamed was born and raised.
“Naz was one of my heroes growing up,” he says. “I’m mixed race … and we got called the same things at school, and we got into fights about the same thing. When Naz came on to the scene, it was a really big deal for me and my brothers. We really looked up to him.”
Hamed’s parents were originally from Yemen and the boxer’s success made him a hero across the Arabic-speaking world. “I actually have his autograph,” recalls Amir El-Masry, the Egyptian-British actor who brilliantly transforms into Hamed. “When I was a kid … I think I was eight years old … he was invited to a Saudi embassy dinner. Some family friends were there, and they managed to get his autograph for me.”
While it would’ve been easy to depict Hamed simply as a boxing legend, Giant doesn’t just lionise its subject. Instead, it shows what happens when sporting success brings sudden, dizzying wealth – something Athale began to recognise in his childhood hero.
“As time went on, I realised that he wasn’t just this perfect sporting figure. He was a very complicated, deeply flawed man,” Athale says.
As the film details, money increasingly became Hamed’s god – a shift that drove a wedge between him and Ingle, the down-to-earth Irishman who discovered him as a seven-year-old.
“It’s a tale as old as time,” says El-Masry. “As soon as money comes into the equation, the devil is at work. I think that's commonplace in any scenario, even in the acting world.”
Examining the intricacies of Ingle and Hamed's surrogate father-son dynamic, Athale was clear about his intentions.
“I didn’t want to perform a hatchet job on Naz,” he says. When he met Hamed before the shoot, “I said, ‘Look, I want to be honest. I’m never going to sugarcoat the more negative elements of your life or your story with Brendan, but I’m not here to make you look like a villain.’ I just want to be as honest as possible. And I think he really appreciated that.”
So what does Hamed make of this warts-and-all portrayal? “He has given us his blessing, or rather, we’re still discussing his blessing,” Athale says with a laugh.
“Naz has seen the film. I personally took it to where he lives in Dubai and showed it to him in a cinema there. And then he asked that back in the UK, we show it to him and his wife and his family. We were very respectful towards him.”
El-Masry echoes the sentiment: “We’re not necessarily villainising anybody in the story.”
Adding further kudos is the fact that Sylvester Stallone – the star of Rocky – is an executive producer.
“Sly agreed to come on board to help us shepherd it into a production,” says Athale. “And, yeah, it’s been wonderful to have the man who almost invented the boxing movie.”
El-Masry nods: “For him to put his stamp on a boxing film is the ultimate certificate … a massive compliment and a testament to the filmmakers.”
The film is anchored by Brosnan, who brings poignancy to his portrayal of Ingle – along with some wonderfully goofy dad-dancing in the opening scene, when Ingle spins Sweet’s 1970s hit Blockbuster at a local disco. Athale first spoke to him when he was in a supermarket and his phone rang unexpectedly.
“There’s Pierce at the other end: ‘Hello, Rowan’, speaking in his perfect James Bond voice. I thought I was being wound up at first.”
For El-Masry, working with the former 007 was a head spin. “It was really surreal at one point when I was in the ring with him, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m fighting James Bond!’” Brosnan also proved invaluable when El-Masry dislocated his finger just before shooting the fight scenes.
“I was gutted, because I’d been working so hard towards that week. And he told me the story about how he broke his leg whilst filming James Bond. It put everything into perspective – you can’t overexert yourself.” Sometimes, pulling your punches is the smart play.
