Failure, they say, is an orphan, whereas success has a thousand fathers.
Who should we credit for people’s fame – themselves or the people behind them? Would Barry McGuigan have got where he was without Barney Eastwood?
I thought of McGuigan as I watched Giant (15A), a pleasant film about the career of another pint-sized boxer, ‘Prince’ Naseem ‘Naz’ Hamed (Amir El-Masry), and the guiding influence of his ‘Plastic Paddy’ manager Brendan Ingle (Pierce Brosnan).
McGuigan once said, “It’s not the size of the man in the fight; it’s the size of the fight in the man.” This sentiment is expressed by Naseem here after he starts beating people taller than him.
Of Yemeni origin and originally from Pakistan, he was the first Muslim to become a world champion. Giant charts the manner in which his relationship to Ingle declines after his career takes off in the 1980s.
One of the problems is the fact that Ingle demands a prohibitive 25% of Naz’s earnings. This is agreed in a handshake deal when he’s a boy. Ingle feels he deserves it. He’s given over so much of his life to training him.
When Naz reneges on it, Ingle becomes belligerent. “God may have given you your talent,” he argues, “but I gave you your skills.”
Ingle says of people he helped in the ring, “First they use you. Then they abuse you. Then they accuse you.” Some people might say that trajectory was also undertaken by Ingle himself.
Brosnan delivers a knockout performance (no pun intended) but uses a Geordie Dub accent that veers too close to Gabriel Byrne’s ‘Tallaghtfornia’ one for comfort. He sometimes fails to drop his ‘gs,’ and says ‘your’ instead of ‘yer,’ which would have been more suitable for his working-class argot.
