'Welcome To The Punch' review by Captain Raptor

'Welcome To The Punch' review by Captain Raptor

I come to this review with a slight bias towards the film's star James McAvoy because he was born in Port Glasgow, which is relatively near to my hometown, and because nobody else of any note was born remotely near us, he's a great source of local pride. But any man deemed worthy to play the great Professor Charles Xavier is surely amazing in their own merit, and I was drawn to this London-set crime thriller by the rest of its strong cast too, including Kick-Ass' Mark Strong and The Walking Dead's David Morrissey. 

Despite its London setting,  Welcome To The Punch has the sensibilities of a classic American cop story: a loose-cannon policeman with a grudge (McAvoy) is given one more chance to catch the criminal (Strong) who evaded and made a fool of him several years ago. This clichéd premise wins no awards for storytelling, but the two leads give very strong performances. McAvoy's cockney copper Max is more Serpico than Lethal Weapon, meaning the darker side of the maverick law enforcer is more prominent, and Strong's villain isn't portrayed as a cackling madman but as a quietly determined man with a moral code. A realistic sense of ethics as opposed to simple 'good vs evil' gives the film a solid grounding, as does Max's leg wound - one shot to the kneecap three years ago is enough to cause him to limp around crime scenes and struggle with running. This weighted sense of accuracy is then tossed on the ground and stamped on by the action scenes, where everybody wields high calibre machine guns apparently set to 'constantly fire in every direction' mode, and the film's final set-piece involves several dozen armed mercenaries rappelling down from the sky.

The action itself is mildly entertaining, caught awkwardly between being either tense and minimal or thrilling and explosive. The performances are all strong and delivered with pathos, but the characters are underdeveloped and generic. As previously mentioned, the plot is unoriginal, but this prevents it from making any mistakes. The whole film smacks of mediocrity, but this doesn't necessarily make it a bad film. All the parts are in working order, and there's nothing that's particularly bad about the film - it's never dull, it's never idiotic, it's never ridiculous. I'd also like to launch a complaint about what appears to be a current trend in movies, in which the talented character actor Jason Flemyng gets cast in an action movie (X-Men: First Class, Clash of the Titans) and only has about 120 seconds of screen time. This isn't as much of an issue here due to the litany of excellent performances by the rest of the cast.

Welcome to the Punch is moody, gritty, entertaining and utterly forgettable. I'd recommend it for pretty much anybody, as it contains enough of both action and drama to sate most audiences, and it's definitely a worthwhile experience. It contributes nothing new to the world of cinema, other than a chance to give James McAvoy more exposure as an excellent leading man. Not that I'm biased or anything.