WELCOME TO THE PUNCH (2013) **

James McAvoy stars as an obsessed cop who will stop at nothing to bring down bank robber Mark Strong.  McAvoy is wounded in an unsuccessful attempt to apprehend him and Strong completely disappears off the face of the earth.  Three years later, Strong’s son winds up getting in a serious jam, forcing him out of hiding.  It’s then up to McAvoy to catch him before his very narrow window of opportunity closes.

Welcome to the Punch is a slick looking police procedural that benefits from some crisp cinematography, but it’s also curiously empty and surprisingly uninvolving.  It often feels like a BBC cop show with a couple of F-Bombs tossed in there to secure an R rating.  The various shootouts occur at a random clip and are staged efficiently enough.  It’s just that they don’t add up to a whole lot when you care very little about what’s going on around them.  

I’m a fan of both leads, and they do what they can with the material.  Ultimately, the weak script never gives them much of an opportunity to flesh out their thin characters.  The predictable plot, while well-paced, never stops long enough to make them into people you really care about either.  They wind up feeling more like cogs in the wheels of the plot machinery than actual human beings.  Andrea (Mandy) Riseborough fares the best as McAvoy’s spunky partner.  She comes the closest to creating someone approaching a three-dimensional character, but unfortunately, she doesn’t stick around long enough for that to happen.

Welcome to the Punch isn’t necessarily a bad movie.  It’s just a predictable and forgettable one.  It’s competently crafted and well-acted, I’ll give it that.  Overall, it doesn’t pack much of a punch.

AKA:  Punch 119.  AKA:  Betrayer.