Plot
Three years after being crippled in an attempt to arrest bank-robbing extraordinaire Jacob Sternwood (Mark Strong), policeman Max Lewinsky (James McAvoy) finds himself without purpose or drive despite the support of good friend/kinda-sorta maybe-a-little-bit love interest Sarah (Andrea Riseborough). After his son is found with a mysterious gunshot wound to the stomach however, Sternwood returns to London to seek vengeance, prompting Lewinsky into action once more in a spiraling conflict that will consume everything from the police force to national politics.
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| So long as you've got a gun, you can rock any beard. |
Review
Classy, stylish, frenetic: if you could use only three words to describe Welcome to the Punch then you couldn’t do much better. That’s not to say it’s a vapid experience, however. It’s a beautifully shot, breathless action film, escalating from set-piece to set-piece, shoot-out to shoot-out in a ruthless assault on the senses.
London has never looked so crisp; washed in a near bioluminescent blue it feels more like another world than the capital city. Colours are saturated and bright, sounds are crisp and cutting; the film plays like a heavy substance trip from car chase start to docklands shoot out finish. This is a production that screams effective simplicity, the abundance of black and empty space brilliantly partnering the explosive action to create a film that contrasts simply by being.
Fitting then, considering the hardy juxtaposition of the central rivals, Sternwood and Lewinsky.
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| Max, is that a gun in your pocket or... |
Punch is unashamedly narrative-driven, focused to the point of suffocation, with one eye primed for action and another for social commentary. It’s tight and meticulously organized, hitting story beats with ruthless accuracy throughout its well-packaged 99 minutes run-time.
It’s remarkable that it manages to hit any other level of meaning at all; in a film that languishes grandiloquently in bullet-time slow-mo and meaty reload sound effects, it is bizarrely progressive. The opposing men – one part unmovable object, other part unstoppable force – lay either side of an intriguing moral dichotomy that’s all kinds of contemporary. Addressing the ever more pertinent issue of gun crime and its influence on youth culture, Punchnever preaches, instead offering a balanced account of the issue, representing different viewpoints in a ‘what do you think’ kind of way rather than: ‘it must be like this.’
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| Sarah, pls. |
Strong’s bank robber may, ostensibly at least, quite clearly stand in the villain’s role, but he’s just as – if not more so – sympathetic a character as McAvoy’s Lewinsky. Ultimately the film asks: to what extent can we lambast a person as criminal and evil, when the machinations (and operators) of society at large are equally condemnable?
It’s something of a shame then that, despite their involvement in an intriguing (if not ultimately insubstantial) moralistic sub-plot, the characters remain static and largely unchanging, as stoic as their physical prowess suggests. This doesn’t mean that they’re disappointing or poorly realised however. Far from it.
While McAvoy may seem a strange fit for hardy copper Lewinsky - his boyish looks and somewhat diminutive stature wilting under the dark physical oppressiveness of Strong’s Sternwood – he performs admirably, helming the heavy narrative demands of the film in a way that’s equal parts believable and approachable. Elsewhere, a quality ensemble cast entrench Punch firmly within the London diegesis, the highlight of which being Johnny Harris’ ex-soldier Dean Warns who oozes a viscous sense of sinister malevolence.
In any great narrative driven film, the characters exist to keep the film in line, like bumpers on a pinball table keeping the ball in play, and, with doubtlessly meticulous direction, Eran Creevey has mastered this art.
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| Picture taken moments before going Super Saiyan. |
The directing is, unsurprisingly, top notch - equal parts cool and engrossing – which unfortunately serves to highlight the sporadic pacing issues. Loud frenetic action scenes – shoot out in a club, shoot out in a living room, shoot out in a hotel…many, many shoot outs – are frequently followed by slightly overlong periods of exposition; there are far too many shots of McAvoy’s bearded confused face, however handsome, for any one film to stand. While narrative explanation isn’t necessarily a bad thing – and is actually handled well in a film that desperately requires it; double crossing is the word of the day in Punch– the finer points of the revenge plots are often glazed over, addressed and dealt with with militaristic efficiency, rather than woven more organically into the narrative as a whole.
Talking of sub-plots, Punch often treats them with toolight a touch. The relationships between Sternwood and his son, as well as Lewinsky and Sarah, are intriguing and developed with a beautifully subtle way, particularly with the latter pair. However, it’s all a little too intangible to really hit home – handled with too deft a touch – for their significance to truly hit home. The impression of the importance of these characters to the leading men is undeniable, but with more emphasis on who they are the film as a whole would have felt far more substantial.
However, it feels almost pointless to talk about slight character failings in a film that, from technical minutiae to over-arching construction, radiates quality. The music, equal parts techno contemporary and classical strings, compliments and contrasts in uniform brilliance, jumping from one to the other in a way that could easily have been jarring if it wasn’t just so damn cool. The action scenes too - seemingly throwing Bond, Bourne and Gareth Evans in a blender – all feel fresh, sufficiently different from each other to have their own identities while working together as a collective. Motorbikes in an underground car park, a chase through a hospital, a raid on an Icelandic cabin: Punch a sightseeing tour of the crème de la crème of action.
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| When his head started glowing that was it, Max was positive he was an alien. |
Verdict
Ultimately, though certain sub-plots disappointingly fail to materialize into anything more than fleeting fancies, Welcome to the Punch is a superlative production; an old-school, thoroughly British, action movie that puts its flashier Hollywood cousins to shame with superior acting, pacing and sheer-faced cool.
4/5
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