Eran Creevy’s Welcome to the Punch centres on Max Lewinsky
(James McAvoy) and his feverish pursuit of master thief Jacob Sternwood (Mark
Strong), who returns to London to help his son who’s caught up in a nasty
conspiracy. Fans of British television would recognise a vast majority of the
cast, made up of David Morrissey, Peter Mullan (currently kicking arse in Top of The Lake) Daniel Mays, Andrea
Riseborough (who’s starring alongside Tom Cruise in Oblivion) among others.
Ed Wild’s cinematography is slick, cold and sharp, and
presents an unrecognizable London, with its lights shining in the dark under a
blue hue. The look is very alien and very modern European. While rendering
familiar places unrecognizable is a cool thing to do (see Leon The Professional and how New York looks like the Parisian
underbelly) this does little to make the film stand out as a British version of
Heat (1995); many shots look like the
film could have been shot in Sweden.
And that would not be that bad, though, if not for that
glaring Heat comparison. This film is
another action crime epic, like Michael Mann’s masterpiece, with the central
protagonists being cops and robbers playing cat and mouse. This time there is
more of a third party threat than there is in Mann’s film, but the comparison
is unmistakeable. Going back to the problem of it not looking too much like
England: the film could have been shot in the US without much of the dialogue
being changed, and as a ‘British Heat’, I feel the film needed just a bit more
to make you associate it with the UK.
But perhaps a British audience with receive the plot better
than I did, as the conspiracy that ties all major events together involves
guns, and the issue of providing guns to UK police in a standard capacity a la
the US. This may be a big issue in the UK post-riots, but in the film to me it
lacked a certain kind of relevance, and felt fake and un-British as a
conspiracy idea.
The whole thing feels just too American to me. I suppose
that’s a trapping of the genre, as action films of this type originated there
and as such the plot and character conventions feel too American. The film is
peppered with these clichés here and there, and as such the film feels like
Brits trying to make an American movie. It feels odd as all the actors on
display are top-shelf and at times the story and the dialogue feel amateurish.
I say amateurish as I recognise the film in a certain way,
its very familiar to me. Not to say that it is; the script won third place in a
competition regarding unproduced screenplays, and found itself with Ridley
Scott as one of its executive producers. I’m just saying that at a young age I
felt like I could make a ‘smart’ action movie, more of a drama with shooting in
it, and had many ideas of writing a film that would have probably turned out
very much like ....Punch. Maybe I will write something like that someday, and
it feels sometimes like the film is cramming American ideas and scenarios into
a British setting, and that feels to me like something a teenager would write.
Which brings me to the film’s misleading title. It feels
like the title of a sassier film, and while there actually is a plot-based
reason as to the name of the film (the words ‘welcome to the punch’ are
blink-and-you-miss-it, but there) the film overall lacks the kind of energy
that the title suggests. There is one great scene, however, where three heroic
characters hold a villain’s grandma hostage, and shootout ensues. This scene
crackles with energy and innovation, and is shot brilliantly. It makes one
wonder why the rest of the film is rather flat, and one must assume that this
scene was a ‘this has to be in the movie’ kind of scenes that the director must
have dreamt about making, as it is the only one with a discernible amount of care
put into it. It’s the most exciting and certainly the most memorable scene in
an otherwise unmemorable film.
The performances are ok. The cast are made up of UK TV
favourites of mine, with some of their great film actors thrown in for good
measure. The problem is they’re not given much to work with. In a short amount
of time the two main characters are dealt great personal blows, and both
reactions aren’t given the right amount of time or gravitas they deserve. It’s
easy to determine who the bad guy is behind it all (it rhymes with ‘flavid
florriesy’) and the reasons and motivations for such criminal acts are hastily
sped through.
The problem is we’re not given much of a reason to care what
happens to any of the characters, really, which leaves us with a cold film that
goes through the motions at times, save for the before mentioned hostage scene.
It at times feels like the actors filmed this on the weekends while they worked
on bigger, better productions during the week; Daniel Mays looks liked he walked
straight off the set of Ashes to Ashes. But it is good seeing McAvoy with a
ginger beard (my friend Andrew has the same problem) and being more like a
tough man than the grown teenager he looks like in Wanted. He turns in a good
performance, but Strong’s scenes needed a bit more oomph. He’s a bit too cold
and calculated, and needed more life.
In all Welcome to the Punch is ok. It’s certainly not the
worst film in the world, but it is by no means the most memorable or the most
original. It’s also a surprisingly long film, so if you’re in the mood to watch
quality UK actors do an ok job in an predictable American style heist revenge
film, give it a look. But I had a better time watching The Sweeney (2012).
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