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Welcome To The Punch begins where Sternwood (Mark Strong) and co have just pulled off a robbery and Max (James MacAvoy) is hot on their tails, but is warned not to go after them unarmed. Naturally, as a rebel cop, he ignores his superiors and goes after them anyway and once his car has caught up with their motorbikes, he manages to corner the lead man but is given a bullet in his leg for his trouble… and off they escape.
3 years later, and while Sternwood is living in a cabin in Iceland with a cracking view of the Aurora Borealis, his son Ruan is in big trub with the law. At the same time, we see Max is still having to go through a daily ritual of draining fluid from his knee where he was shot. For now, it seems crime does pay.
What follows is a gritty cops-and-robbers film set in London where, naturally, Max and Sternwood will play cat and mouse for a while, and while it runs for 100 minutes, it doesn’t outstay its welcome – quite a rarity for any film these days, especially those Hollywood epics that go on for almost two-and-a-half hours and could easily have a good 20-30 minutes cut out of them.
It also features a cast which is basically a “who’s who?” of British acting talent. McAvoy made his name on Channel 4’s Shameless before moving on to big movies like Atonement and The Last King of Scotland; Mark Strong always puts in a worthy performance; David Morrissey plays Lt.Commander Thomas Geiger, a bigwig in the police who, in the light of a forthcoming general election, wants whoever ends up at No.10 to arm all the police with weapons; The superb Andrea Riseborough partners Max as Sarah, a moralistic cop who is sure of her stance on the difference between right and wrong. Throw in Jason Flemyng, Johnny Harris and Peter Mullan and you have the talent to back up a strong script with great visuals.
The plot gets a bit criss-crossy as the various strands come together and I had to watch the final summing up just to take it all in, but to dismiss it for that would be unfair because this is a solid 100 minutes of entertainment if, albeit, not the most original film you’ll ever watch. However, it tells a tale that’s most definitely worth watching.
Quoting the fantastic Ridley Scott as being an “executive producer” can sometimes mean that can have very little to do in the proceedings, so it always made me laugh with other films when they throw in a big name and say it was “executive-produced” by that person, as if they turned up each day and put in a hard day’s graft. They explain in the Q&A, during the extras, that Ridley’s name helped lend weight to getting things done in their film when they wouldn’t have been able to previously because the director had only made one film before and with a budget of a mere £100,000.
Well, we never got to find out exactly what he did, beyond holding an enthusiastic meeting with Mr Cleevy in Los Angeles after having a read of the script, but Mark Strong tells of how the great man turned up on the set of Robin Hood and did his knee in while trying to move some boats about which were stuck in the surf, not realising that they weighed FIVE TONS! Whoopsy! We got the idea that he’s more hands-on than some, so I’ll have to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Welcome To The Punch had a budget of $8.5m and looks like a film that has a budget many times that. The makers of the $190m budget Star Trek Into Darkness take note. You need a film to take 3 times its budget to break even, taking all the marketing promotion into account. Good luck with that, JJ.
Go to page 2 for a look at the disc’s presentation and the extras.
Presented in the original 2.35:1 theatrical ratio and in 1080p high definition, great use is made of the full widescreen frame courtesy of director Creevy and the cinematographer Ed Wild. The film is very stylishly shot and the direction is frequently exactly what I’d always want to see on the big screen for an action thriller, making London look almost futuristic at times, and I think any Hollywood exec watching this should give serious thought to hiring these two.
Gunfire and explosions are used to good effect during this film. It’s not a SFX film that’s going to make this a demo disc, but it does the required job perfectly and will wake up the neighbours when you turn up the 5.1 DTS HD MA soundtrack.
The extras are few in number, but are as follows:
- Welcome To The Punch Q&A (18:37): This features writer/director Eran Creevy, producer Rory Aitken and Mark Strong.
They mention a subplot and another element, neither of which I’ll detail here for giving spoilers about elements that *were* left in, that they had to cut out of the film in order to keep the film tight and not to put too much extraneous information in.
It’s also interesting to learn how they had to keep the noise down during gun battles because they’re filming at night in Canary Wharf while nearby residents are sleeping. Sadly, just as I’m getting into this Q&A, we don’t get the whole thing. It practically cuts off mid-sentence while Eran is talking. Why? What was stopping them from showing all of it? It’s not as if the disc is packed with extras!
- Behind the Scenes (18:19): Here, we learn how it took two years to write and hone down the original script, and what follows is the usual case of clips from the film set against chat from key cast and crew members. It includes a discussion about a key scene late in the film, again which I don’t want to describe for fear of giving spoilers, but all I’ll say is that it’s set in a house. When it comes, you will know.
- Trailer (1:51): Presented in the original 2.35:1 widescreen ratio, this gives away one major plot point which I think is best left to seeing in the film itself, so I wouldn’t watch this beforehand. Just head straight into the film. You will not be disappointed.
- Audio description: for those who require it.
The menu features clips from the film to the pulsating beat of the soundtrack, subtitles are in English only and there are the usual lack of chapters, as with most discs – sadly – with a pathetic 12 across the whole film.
Before all that, however, comes a big no-no: trailers BEFORE the main menu… AND an advert for a chocolate bar! This is not the age of rental video! This is not a good state of affairs.
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FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS |
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| OVERALL | 7 |
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 100 minutes
Year: 2013
Cat no: MP1211BR
Distributor: Momentum Pictures
Released: July 29th 2013
Chapters: 12
Picture: 1080p High Definition
Sound: 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1
Languages: English
Subtitles: English SDH
Widescreen: 2.35:1 (Digital Intermediate 2K)
Disc Format: BD50
Director: Eran Creevy
Producers: Rory Aitken, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones and Ben Pugh
Screenplay: Eran Creevy
Music: Harry Escott
Cast:
Max Lewinsky: James McAvoy
Jacob Sternwood: Mark Strong
Sarah Hawks: Andrea Riseborough
Dean Warns: Johnny Harris
Nathan Bartnick: Daniel Mays
Thomas Geiger: David Morrissey
Roy Edwards: Peter Mullan
Jane Badham: Natasha Little
Juka Ogadowa: Daniel Kaluuya
Iris Warns: Ruth Sheen
Harvey Crown: Jason Flemyng
Ruan Sternwood: Elyes Gabel
Robert Wiseman: Robert Portal
Luke: Jason Maza
Barber: Jay Simpson
Joseph Ojogo: Seun Shote
Karen Edwards: Dannielle Brent
Henry Callaghan: David Michaels
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.
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