Giant (2025) Movie Review: A Long and Halfhearted Attempt to Capture a Real-Life Tale through a Formulaic Rise-and-Fall Arc

Share it

Sylvester Stallone serves as an executive producer for “Giant,” a feature film about a British boxer. That might make it seem like a British version of “Rocky,” and the film draws attention to this through a quote on its poster, which says it’s ‘the UK’s answer to Rocky.’ On one hand, it makes sense because it’s also an inspiring tale of an underdog trying to make it big in the boxing world. However, the arc of its protagonist more closely resembles that of Jake LaMotta in Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull,” where the character’s ego becomes one of his biggest concerns, rather than the awe-inspiring ascent of a boxer explored in the Stallone-led “Rocky.”

Rowan Athale, who wrote and directed the film, focuses on this aspect of his protagonist’s life for the bulk of the second act. That may not have been an issue if the film were about a fictional character, but Athale’s script fails to hold your attention after a point because it tries to fit a real-life tale into a biopic formula. In the process, the film suffers from its constantly shifting focus, leaving some of its crucial moments painfully contrived.

The film revolves around Naseem Hamed (played by Amir El-Masry), a professional boxer, who once made the boxing ring a stage to earn the respect he deserved. Born in a family of Yemeni immigrants in England, he was often bullied by his peers. It naturally inspired him to fight back and be treated as an equal.

The first act of the film explores the racist abuse that Naseem and his family faced for being brown in late 20th-century Britain. It also highlights how inane those racist insults were, given Naseem’s ancestral identity being far removed from the slurs they used for his family. Athale captures these details with tenderness and compassion, offering us enough to resonate with Naseem’s plight as a kid. That’s also where he introduces Pierce Brosnan as Brendan Ingle, a local boxing trainer, who took Naseem under his wing. He realized the potential Naseem had at this age and nurtured it through proper guidance into boxing.

Athale’s film is strongest in this section because it captures the beauty of their budding relationship through a humane drama. The focus remains on exploring what they meant to each other at this point in their lives. Ingle (at least in the film) is introduced as a boxer past his glory years and as a boxing trainer not respected by his peers. Hamed, even if he looked innocent as a pre-teen, had enough rage to ward off his bullies. So, the script presents him and Ingle as two underdogs who become each other’s way to salvation.

It’s a fairly conventional hook, but Athale manages to build something resonant with it in the beginning. The film derails from the moment it transitions to the arc of Hamed’s adulthood to analyze his drastically transformed character. Athale tries to paint it as many things: a rousing sports drama with adrenaline-inducing scenes, a psychological breakdown of a bloated ego, and a stirring account of a forgotten hero. While doing so, it abandons the themes explored in the first act about Hamed’s racial identity in contemporary Britain, ending up with what feels like a one-sided account against him.

It offers a jarring transition between Hamed’s young self, breaking out of his shell, and his adult self, letting the hate directed at him be a fuel for his ego. While the factors behind that transition are established, the film never fleshes them out, leaving Hamed’s character simply in service of its formulaic plot. He is sidelined in a film (that’s mainly about him) roughly after the half-hour mark. Since then, it has focused almost entirely on Ingle being undermined by him.

Brosnan is, of course, reliable in channeling Ingle’s pain over his influence being overlooked at the time. He paints the trainer’s overwhelming frustration and body language in a shade that is farthest from the kind of suave confidence that he channeled as James Bond. However, his passionate performance doesn’t suffice for a script that simply keeps his and El-Masry’s characters in service to the director’s genre ambitions. It’s unfortunate because, even as a rousing sports film, it is surprisingly lifeless.

That’s mainly because there’s little to no effort in exploring Hamed’s interiority as an adult. So, even El-Masry’s commitment to the role doesn’t help make up for a character underdeveloped in the script itself. On top of that, the cultural nuances are lost in the script that emphasizes his Muslim identity over and over, using it almost to paint his antagonistic arc in the second half, without letting us understand his side of the story.

There’s still a compelling drama in the trainer’s arc, anchored by Brosnan’s calculated performance, but that is insufficient for a film that feels one-sided, whether you know the real story or not. Athale’s direction shines in flashes, particularly in parts where Brosnan and El-Masry (apart from the young cast members) are left to do the heavy lifting. However, they can’t juice up what remains an oddly dull film.