Majikat
So much to like about this film, from the great choice of Actors; McAvoy, Strong, Mullen, to the revenge plot and interactions. It did however disappoint in one particular scene showing an inside gun fight with spraying bullets, missing everyone, it all went a bit over the top Hollywood at that point.With a few tweaks this could easily have become a Brit classic. Still very enjoyable!
Akhil Balachandran
Police detective Max was chasing a criminal named Jacob Sternwood and gets shot in the knee. The injury is a daily reminder to him and Sternwood escaped to Iceland. Years later, Sternwood's son gets caught at the airport by the police and the incident forced Sternwood to come back in action. The film opens with a heist scene and As a lightweight entertainer it works. McAvoy portraits the cop role and Strong handle the tough criminal role. The pace of Eran's story negatively affects the whole movie. The Creevy's film has a different approach to its genre and the only thing that actually works in the movie is the intense chase scenes. Overall, It's an action oriented movie and watchable one too.
carbuff
I put this on specifically because it starred James McAvoy, who up until now has reliably turned up in unique and daring films. After viewing this I am fearful that the interesting part of his career might be waning, because this production very much seems like a paycheck film. Due to the extremely competent acting and cinematography, the film is quite watchable, but the essential story has been done a zillion times before. None of the material is original at all. It's really a case of, "Nothing to see here folks, just move along"; however, I don't completely feel that I totally wasted my time, because, while totally conventional and derivative, it is very slickly produced. Watching this still qualifies as a minor mistake when I consider that there are only so many hours in a day and certainly so many better films out there. From now on, like Samuel Jackson, I'm afraid McAvoy being on the bill might no longer be a useful shortcut for choosing a film. I'm not writing him off just yet, but this particular role was no acting risk and can't be viewed as a good omen. So, in short, pure cinematic junk food. Reasonably tasty cinematic junk food, but forgettable and empty nevertheless.
Leofwine_draca
WELCOME TO THE PUNCH is a monumental failure of a film, even worse than the recent SWEENEY remake directed by Nick Love. The blame for this film's failure can be laid at the door of writer/director Eran Creevy, a guy who displays a fundamental lack of understanding when it comes to action direction and indeed writing a decent script.Essentially this is a crime film that sees the central characters investigating a flimsy, over-contrived back story that actually has nothing to do with any of them. This story - a predictable mystery with all of the non-surprising surprises you'd expect - is so trivial as to be barely worth writing down, and yet they manage to drag it out to feature length thanks to plenty of padding and unnecessarily filler material. The action, when it hits, is ludicrous, either inappropriate slow motion or random "pop up and shoot" bad guy moments, like in the laughable climax.The direction is equally poor, with Creevy making the bad decision of over-utilising the 'teal effect' for this film. This is where the entire film is tinted blue and orange, and it's such a cliché that I can't believe directors are still incorporating it into their movies. It makes for a muted, artificial look that dragged my enjoyment of the film down even further. It's a pity that a decent cast has been wasted in this non-starter of a film, with reliable performances from James McAvoy and Mark Strong as the leads, alongside David Morrissey and Peter Mullan; Jason Flemyng and Elyas Gabel provide cameo appearances but are equally wasted. And, indeed, the whole thing is a monumental waste of time.
AD
