Grab some of the finest British actors
working today, put them in crime thriller with a slick
setting, a hot young director with a sharp visual eye and toss
in a lot of guns… and what do you get? To my surprise,
you get the same thing you would get if the movie were shot
here in the United States, the being a real stupid action
movie. 'Welcome to the Punch' people. More of the
same, but with accents and a silly title.
Cop Max Lewinsky (James McAvoy) really, really hates
professional thief Jacob Sternwood (Mark Strong).
Imagine the thing you despise the most, then multiply that by
a thousand, and you still haven't scratched the surface as to
how much Lewinsky hates Sternwood. But just wait, it
gets worse.
Sternwood's crew, as this film opens, has just pulled a
heist. Max got the drop on the crew and chases them
through some deserted London streets. Eventually the
four criminals on motorbikes descend into an underground
parking facility and Lewinsky's boss on the radio EXPLICITLY
tells him not to follow them down there. He's a British
cop so he has no gun. Chances are the guys he's chasing
do have guns. Seems pretty cut and dry to me. Not
so much to Max. He goes down there, corners Sternwood…
and surprise, he has gun and shoot Max in the leg and gets
away.
Three years have passed and if you think Max hated Sternwood
before, you should see him now. Today Max is just
a disgraced cop with bad knee and a worse attitude. He
has a partner in Sarah (Andrea Riseborough) who I believe
kinds of loves him, but Max isn't really the most lovable guy
around, so we can see why this relationship of theirs isn't
exactly flourishing.
Now a couple of things happen which changes
pretty much everything for everybody in this movie, and
amazingly these things which seem separate, are all uniquely
connected. First Sarah and Max arrest a guy name Warms
(Johnny Harris) who they think might be doing some gun running
and maybe a little murder on the side. Then Sternwoods
son Ruan (Elyes Gabel) shows up in a hospital with a near
fatal gun wound to the gut. Also, there's a dead kid
that popped up who happens to a good friend of Ruan. On
the periphery of all of this is a candidate running for office
on the platform of UK cops getting guns and body armor.
Now the important thing that's relevant about all of these
seemingly disconnected events is that Sternwood's son is in
the hospital and Max is banking, or desperately hoping that
the senior Sternwood will show up and try to get him out of
this hospital, thus finally giving Max absolution.
What ends up happening is that Sternwood is in town, and he'd
like to get his son out of this hospital, but he desperately
wants to find out who shot his boy and why. Also, Max's
girl Sarah has a few clues of her own she needs to check
out. Ultimately, a lot of bad things happen to both Max
and Sternwood, and even though they hate each other, more so
Max hates Sternwood as Sternwood could really care less about
Max, but these things that happen to these two dudes are so
awful that they have to put their differences aside and
completely shoot up London.
Directed by Eran Creevy, 'Welcome to the Punch' is certainly
one of the better looking crime thrillers that you are going
to see. It's all neon and steel, cold environments,
slick buildings and reflections… This is one movie with style
to burn. Now we could ask 'is there a lot of substance
supporting this style?' Uh… not really. The movie
was entertaining enough, if for no other reason that there
were bullets flying all over the place for a good portion of
this movie, and these scenes were well realized, and also
because you had some fine actors playing their one-note
characters like a maestro with one finger, but the movie was
missing a few things. Chief among these would be a soul
as there wasn't an awful lot of depth to anything going on in
this movie, and second thing 'Welcome to the Punch' could've
benefited from would've been a narrative that didn't rely on
amazing coincidences to push it from scene to scene. The
chances of all these disparate elements coming together at the
moments that they do, or certain characters meeting at certain
spots at just the right time was a bit of a stretch on the
imagination. Since this is a real world crime thriller
and not a fantasy epic, these elements, and the way they were
executed, weren't working all that well in this movie.
Then there were the performances, though not bad but they were
lacking. Not because the actors couldn't pull them off
but because they didn't have much to work with. Mark
Strong played stoic, though he did get a chance to cry.
James McAvoy played stressed, but he got the chance to fight
back his tears which I guess was the stretch for his
character. James Harris played crazy, Andrea Riseborough
played concerned, with only David Morrissey as the police
commissioner, still playing the type of duplicitous, slimy
role we're used to seeing him play, but his character did
travel some emotional ground.
Now this may sound like I didn't like this movie, but that's
not really true. I was entertained by 'Welcome to the
Punch', mainly because I am usually entertained by slick,
stupid action movies and this one filled that basic
need. Creevy keeps his movie in motion, good
actors playing one note well is usually better than bad actors
playing many notes badly, and there was plenty of
action.
So while I thought 'Welcome to the Punch' might be a smarter
and a more clever type of thriller… I didn't get that.
That's my fault. Silly me placing false expectations on
my cinema simply because the actors talk funny. It's
just an entertaining stupid action movie, but one with a
higher pedigree than most.
