Review of Welcome to the Punch (2013) by Dawdlingpoet — 28 Nov 2021

This is an action thriller film, featuring themes including conspiracy, police, heists and flashbacks. Its quite fast paced, starting in the middle of action with a number of people quickly doing a getaway through London on motorbikes at night. It seemed quite slick and gripping based on that initial scene and certainly got my attention to start with. The fact its set at night also adds a sense of mystery and tension. The 'bad guys' sound like fairly typical London gangster types i.e. lugubrious. The camerawork was a little too jerky for my personal liking, during the faster, chase type scenes, it was quite disorientating and I found that frustrating. Some aspects of the plot are a bit predictable but it was tense enough to keep me watching regardless and its not so long as to become overly tedious, which is good - it has a total running time of about an hour and thirty nine minutes, for the record.

Cast wise, the good guy (cop) Max Lewinsky is played by James McAvoy. He comes across as an enthusiastic, up and coming young police officer determined to get his way, while the main villain, Jacob Sternwood, is played by Mark Strong. He is quite burly and intimidating and certainly not someone you'd want to mess with. Other cast emmbers include Andrea Riseborough, who plays Sarah Hawks, David Morissey, who plays Thomas Geiger and Johnny Harris as Dean Warns.

Content wise, the film contains strong language and moderate violence, including gunfire enduced violence but also fist fights and the like. Blood is shown at times and a corpse is also shown on screen at one point. Drug taking is shown if briefly, with someone shown injecting themselves. Otherwise, there's little else liekly to offend, that I was aware of in any case - the film has been given a 15 rating to reflect this.

To me, this came across as a relatively old fashioned British crime drama story but with some reasonable stylish flairs added at times, however the unnecessary jerky camerawork did bother me after a while. The lighting was such that the majority of scenes seemed to have a dark blue tint to it, which I guess was done to add to the urban feel of it, although im not sure it really made a great deal of difference overall. I think if the plot was adjusted in some areas, it would perhaps be a bit more impressive - its not a horrendous film but its certainly not great. I lost interest in the story somewhere between half way and three quarters of the way through, which obviously isn't great. If it helps, I'd say this film is a bit like the films Jason Statham appears in, with some relatively decent special effects and fast scenes but a little bland otherwise, so it didn't impress me too much. There was also a (if but mild/minor) element of sexism that I didn't think much of.

No, I wouldn't especially recommend it. Its not an awful film per se but its hardly very good - I thought it was pretty unmemorable really, although I imagine other people may enjoy it more than I did. It came across as a bit like a long TV programme, only slightly more stylish and slick during the fast paced scenes. The plot isn't entirely original either. Suffice to say, there are better and there are worse films of this type out there but overall I wouldn't recommend going out of your way to see it.