Welcome To The Punch (2013)

 'Welcome To The Punch' is another movie to add to the already overflowing category of British gangster films. Max Lewinsky (James McAvoy) has dedicated his career in the police force to capturing Jacob Sternwood (Mark Strong), an infamous London based gang boss. Years after Sternwood has injured Lewinsky and gone into hiding, his son is killed in a heist gone wrong. This forces Sternwood to return to London and gives Lewinsky his chance to finally arrest the man that has become his obsession.

 Now I like a good London gangster film, and there are some pretty good ones out there. This, however, does not fit into that group. I won't start with the bad stuff though, that can wait. To shine a slightly positive light on the movie, it does have some decent action sequences. There's plenty of shooting and car chases to keep people happy (which is probably a good thing really). To mention another positive factor, the acting is pretty good from all members of the cast. In particular, Mark Strong yet again gives a good performance as the bad guy but with a bit of a twist.

 To move onto the bad points, there are many flaws to this film, but I will just focus on the main points to save time. There is no real development of the story, any of the characters and there is no real originality to the whole movie. They seem to have neglected some of the most important aspects of telling a good story for shoot-outs, speeding cars and punch-ups. Everything that happens is utterly predictable and lacks any form of imagination or creativity. The characters are lifeless and dull and any attempt at a back story or development is half hearted at best. I tend to find that with action films they are better if you get behind someone and are willing for them to succeed. With this film, I just didn't care about any of them. I guess that means it's probably a good thing that the film itself is fairly short, lasting a total of 90 minutes (or thereabouts), so the pain of watching the movie isn't too extensive and drawn out. It's only an hour and a half of your life that has been completely wasted.

 Therefore, to sum up, I guess it's pretty obvious what my general opinion of this movie is. Don't waste your time with it. If you are bored and want to watch people shooting at each other without really having to think about it too much, then maybe this film will meet those requirements. But even then, nearly every other British gangster film would probably be a far better choice.