On the surface, ‘Giant’ looks like a familiar sports drama, but it’s doing something more interesting than that. It tells the story of British boxing champion Prince Naseem Hamed (Amir El-Masry) and, crucially, his relationship with his Sheffield-based trainer and manager Brendan Ingle (Pierce Brosnan), who spotted his extraordinary talent when he was still a young boy and believed he could go all the way.

The controversy at the heart of the film concerns a deal made early on: Ingle secured 25 percent of Naseem’s future earnings, knowing full well that the boy was likely to become extremely wealthy. Yet the film’s perspective is that Brendan did not exploit that power. He stayed in the same modest home, avoided the trappings of wealth, and appeared genuinely proud of his pupil rather than motivated by greed. This complicates the usual narrative of exploitation in sport.

The film also foregrounds the racism Naseem faced growing up in 1980s and 90s Britain – tied to his background and Muslim faith – and how that adversity shaped both his defiance and his flamboyance. His success in the ring becomes inseparable from performance: the entrances, the dancing, the showmanship. Boxing here isn’t just sport, it’s spectacle, and a form of resistance.

Brendan is clearly framed as a father figure, but the film doesn’t ignore the fractures. Naseem’s brothers increasingly suspect that Brendan’s influence may not be wholly benign, and the eventual split is acrimonious. They never reconciled, and what is particularly clever is the film’s use of a might-have-been redemption arc – imagining a reconciliation that never occurred. It gestures toward the many famous partnerships that ended in bitterness, reminding us how rare closure actually is.

There’s also an irony at play: Brendan trained Naseem to be cocky, fearless, and larger-than-life – and it may have been precisely that cockiness which later turned against both of them. The film raises an intriguing religious question too: are Naseem’s gifts from God, or from his trainer? Notably, ‘Giant’ tells its story largely through Brendan’s perspective, making this less a sports biopic than a meditation on mentorship, pride, and loss – the man in the shadows rather than the champion in the spotlight.

It’s also striking to see the actor best known for playing James Bond here stripped of glamour, inhabiting a dowdier, earthier presence — more ‘Thursday Murder Club’ than tuxedoed superspy. Even for viewers who don’t usually gravitate toward sports films, ‘Giant’ transcends the genre, recalling mentor-student dramas like ‘Good Will Hunting’, and asking searching questions about loyalty, authorship, and who really owns a success story.