Review of Welcome to the Punch (2013) by Cheryl L — 24 Mar 2013

Is it better to fail at something ambitious and laudable, or achieve success by setting the bar a lot lower? A tough question to be sure, but one which I couldn't stop asking myself after coming out of this film. There is a lot to admire about this film, from the way it is directed to within an inch of its life to bring out the beauty of modern London (perhaps over doing it slightly at times), or the way it tried to marry an ever twisting story with some genuinely good action and gunplay. However, despite all it tries, I came out of it slightly disappointed, and without ever having really been engaged with anything that had been happening on screen.

My first issue was with James McAvoy. I quite like him, but I'm sorry, I said it when Wanted came out, and I say it again, he is not a leading man, and he simply cannot carry off this sort of film. He looked out of his depth from the start (his accent didn't help), and when he was opposite Mark Strong it really did look like men against boys in every sense of the expression. The plot was also an issue, as it wanted to be both very slick, original and clever, and achieved none of these things. All the twists were so telegraphed that you saw some of them coming from the adverts, the sub plot about the politician and the gun manufacturers struck me as ridiculous, and too many of these scenes involved plot exposition and people standing around spouting "cor blimey" at each other, and it never felt even remotely real.

I understand that, to some degree, this isn't meant to be real in the fullest sense of the word, but rather more a home-based homage to the works of people like Michael Mann, however for me it was all style and no substance, and just because you try to make a film look like Heat, it doesn't mean it is going to come out a classic.

Overall then, a decent stab, and there is enough in there to have been interesting in more accomplished hands. However, throughout all of the film I couldn't stop thinking quite why I wasn't watching this as 6 part ITV series on a Tuesday night. That is where a story like this can breathe and we can actually have something in the way of character development. That is where it belongs.