Movie – Welcome to the Punch

 Detective Max Lewinsky has one more chance to arrest super criminal Jacob Sternwood when he re-surfaces to see his son, who is unsuccessfully trying to following in his footsteps.Throughout, we are shown the clip when Sternwood had the opportunity to kill our detective but let him live. Why? Lewinsky has nightmares about this and then the real daytime nightmare unfolds as he slowly discovers that Sternwood is not the only bad guy out to kill him. His own department has dirty cops, but who?It’s an OK film with way too many slow-motion shots of bullet sprays and I lost count of the number of gun deaths per minute.It leaves far more questions than it answers. Such as why is one of the busiest cities in the world so quiet and indeed, why is London blue. Something kind of product placement?Why did all the police department have (irritating – sorry!) Essex accents or was the only police department in the south east in this particular surreal world plonked in Essex?What saved it are the performances. There are very few actors that will be a deciding factor in me seeing a film or not and Mark Strong (Sternwood) is one of them. Good Essex accent from James McAvoy (Lewinsky) too.Quite classy, could have been better.7/10Smile factor 6/10 (fell asleep for the first few minutes though)