Christopher Rhoten
As Film Obsessive’s own Don Shanahan wrote in his recent review of Antoine Fuqua’s Michael, if every biopic covered a life that was easy and perfect, there wouldn’t be much of a movie. Like the superhero genre of the 2020s, biopics are increasingly engineered with a built-in fanbase in mind. They offer stories people are already familiar with and, more often than not, exist to give viewers a chance to see their favorite icon on the big screen. Though our review leaned positive, Michael is a recent example that divided critics, skillfully playing the hits but carefully sidestepping anything that would bring too much drama to the celebration at its core.
As Don also wrote, the formula appeals for a reason. Taking a breezy trip down memory lane is, of course, a valid approach to telling a story, and many of these films entertain both fans and casual audiences alike. Yet, as with anything, this approach risks becoming stale and monotonous if repeated too often. Like the worst superhero films, the most surface-level biopics are fantasies that offer little in the way of twists and turns, or even conflict.
So, too, does using the rumored, implied, or outright fictional for inspiration bring its own share of issues: Andrew Dominik’s Blonde and Damien Chazelle’s First Man proved that digging too deeply can result in even greater controversy. Though I don’t have a solution in mind, perhaps it’s as simple as realizing that an exceptionally successful life doesn’t always have an exceptional story to tell. Audiences may think they want Hollywood to quit meddling with reality and give us the facts, but ideally, filmmakers pick subjects primed to carry a film for two hours.
And that’s where, conceptually, Giant stands head and shoulders above the rest. Based not only on the life of famed British boxer “Prince” Naseem Hamed but also on that of his trainer, Brenden Ingle, this is a story practically begging for a shot on the big screen. Giant (which should probably be called “Prince,” though the issue presented is obvious) tells a complex story not just of simple success or blind ambition, but also betrayal, ego, and regret.
Or it tries to, rather. Giant starts with young Naseem learning the ropes in Sheffield, England, courtesy of his Irish trainer, played with grit and class by Pierce Brosnan. The young Naseem, both Arab and Muslim, discovers there’s no prejudice within the affable but tough trainer. Instead, Brenden is focused on Naseem’s obvious potential. For one, he lets name-calling and verbal attacks roll off his shoulders like an incoming hook, displaying the confidence and self-belief necessary to win. Two, he intuitively understands footwork. During his first time in the ring at a mere seven years of age, Naseem slips and pivots up a storm as his opponent lunges wildly and exaggeratedly, a scene that, in reality, would say more about the opponent’s skill than Hamed’s.
The scene is indicative of the film at large, one with solid ideas but some sloppiness in the execution. As the film progresses and the duo finds tremendous success at both the amateur and professional levels, their bond cracks under the strain of a single question: who deserves the credit? Naseem and his brother give the glory to Allah, while Brenden, rather humbly, maintains that the twenty years of training had something to do with it.
Giant fails to take full advantage of this tension for the majority of the runtime, unsure how to defend Ingle while portraying the flash, wit, and sheer talent of one of boxing’s most exciting superstars. More often than not, the shoddier sections of writer-director Rowan Athale’s script simply tell us how these characters feel. The vessel is occasionally Brenden’s wife, Vicki, who thanklessly appears every few scenes to explain there’s a rift growing between the pair. Other times, it arrives in the form of childish outbursts that feel completely out of the blue, such as the not one but two scenes where Naseem has a cruel laugh at Brenden’s own unimpressive amateur record. If the game plan is to make Hamed come off as off-putting as his in-ring antics are to his opponents, things get dangerously close to mission accomplished.
It doesn’t help that Giant is unexceptional as a boxing film. If the most immediate pleasure of a biopic is to recreate whatever made that person so beloved, one might come away thinking the Prince was mediocre. While certain fights play better than others (like Naseem’s first title bout at Madison Square Garden, which certainly captures the scale of such an event), most are cursory, featuring featureless punching bags that “Naz” styles on in a way that’s not very exciting. But it is a nice touch how, towards the end of his career, slow motion is used to reflect the decline of the world’s once-fastest fighter.
Despite all of the issues with the script, Athale does understand that Giant, like Baz Luhrmann’s wonderfully over-the-top Elvis, is something of a tragedy. Whereas that film followed a man swallowed up in the mythos created by his manager, Giant features two men with good intentions, distanced by a cultural rift that once seemed like a strength. It’s Naseem’s unwillingness to give an inch that brings about his demise, and yet it’s a personality Brenden encouraged, perhaps even created, in the gym.
Though Sheffield’s own would drop a single fight throughout his entire career, all the fame in the world can’t replace the warmth of a friend or a mentor. It’s in the later sections of the film, where the two split and go their separate ways, that Brosnan and star Amir El-Masry are allowed to fully embody embittered men. The film’s ending is moving in an unexpected way, a conclusion that the real-life Hamed (who wasn’t consulted at all, unsurprisingly), speaking on both the film and his relationship with the late Ingle, says he wished was real.
Brosnan’s sage is right—being unforgettable does matter. There’s no question this story is one worthy of being told, and at the end of the day, that’s the crucial element that helps Giant land. But it’s only a glancing blow. One wishes the script had borrowed a bit more from Ingle’s smarts and Hamed’s flash. For a story with this much depth, Giant is a potential heavyweight biopic that’s lacking in the fundamentals.
