38
The sheer wastefulness of Eran Creevy's Welcome to the Punch is off-putting enough, but the film is also falsely painted-up as a crime epic.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
80
A confident, ambitious and action-rich Brit thriller, albeit one whose characters and clarity suffer from the frantic intensity of its pacing.
60
There’s an emotional vacuum at its centre but Welcome To The Punch is an adrenalin shot to the heart of the Brit-crime genre.
60
A proficient but personality-free policer that demands little of either its audience or its enviable best-of-British cast, this simplistic urban morality tale miscasts the appealing James McAvoy as one good cop whose dogged pursuit of Mark Strong’s alpha criminal only uncovers the rot within police ranks.
60
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
There are good movies and plenty more bad ones and many, many more that fall somewhere in between. And then there are enjoyable absurdities like Welcome to the Punch, which contain evaluative multitudes and which, scene by scene, register as not bad, pretty good and flat-out ridiculous.
83
The Playlist by Oliver Lyttelton
For most of the run-time, Welcome To The Punch is thrillingly cinematic, beautifully made, smarter and funnier than you'd expect, and a phenomenal showcase for Creevy and his team.
40
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
It runs out of steam, with plot revelations visible from a mile away and a bit of a plausibility gap.
50
Empty, pointless and stupid, the barrage of gunfire called Welcome to the Punch is another unappealing entry in the overworked British gangster genre.