Giant (2025)

 

Giant was a mystery screening (not due out until 9th January) which tells the story of Brendan Ingle (played by Pierce Brosnan) as he trains Prince Nadeem Hamed (Amir El-Mary) from a seven year old boy to being world champion. Growing up in the UK during the 90’s I knew who Prince Nadeem Hamed was but its been many many years since he was in the public eye so I knew next to nothing about him. The main focus of the film is Brendan. It’s his boxing club that we see Naz become the world champion of boxing, its his home life we see from time to time as there is very little of Naz’s homelife when he was growing up and the racial abuse that he and his family suffer.

The film is a Die Another Day reunion because we have Pierce Brosnan and Toby Stephens with Stephens playing Frank Warren and whilst Stephens doesnt look like Warren. I suppose those outside the UK or people who don’t follow boxing probably won’t notice or even care. Brosnan is great in this as he usually is in most things he is in and I thought that Amir El-Masry was good as the older Naz but I thought that Ali Saleh was very good as the 12 year old Naz and a part of me wanted there to be more of him in the film although I understand that the story needed to move along. 

The boxing scenes are fine but don’t have the impact that the ones in the Creed films have. Also when we see the stadium shots or what is suppose to pass for Madison Square Garden then it does come across as a little cheap because there are not shots to suggest we are were the film says we are.

There is a scene at the end where Brendan and Naz reconcile and it feels like this is the films attempt to give us a satisfying ending because the real ending is that they never reconciled which is definitely a sad ending but i suppose if you are telling a true story then you have to follow the less Hollywood-type ending. The film tries to paint Brendan as this likeable guy and he is to a point but he is portrayed as a naive indi  early on he arranges a business deal with a child and treats this like a gentlemen’s agreement and expecting it to be honoured and I couldn’t figure out whether he was just riding his luck or he genuinely believed this would be honoured. There is also something sus about arranging a business deal with a child, there is something that in another film would have made them a baddie. 

This is the third film this year about a real life fighting person that I didn’t know a huge amount about. This is more like Christy and less like The Smashing Machine in the sense that they took a individual that I didn’t know anything about and make their story interesting. I would say that it’s more of a enjoyable watch than Christy although that film does have a better plot. It will be worth your time especially if you are a boxing fan.