Get a life

Welcome to the Punch is a British crime action thriller and here is why you may wish to see it: it is set in a night-time London so magnificently lit even I wanted to visit, and I live there. And now, ten reasons you can skip it, get on with your life and save 99 minutes, whether those minutes are precious or not. My time isn’t particularly precious, but it may be different for you. Here you are.

1. Although it has a top, top cast (James McAvoy, Mark Strong, Andrea Riseborough, David Morrissey) it only goes to prove the following old saying: the best cast in the world cannot save a poor script/story, try as they might. The fact I’ve just made up this old saying doesn’t make it any less true, for now or all time.

2. The basic plot: when criminal Jacob Sternwood (Strong) is forced to return to London because his son is involved in a heist gone wrong, a grimly determined detective, Max Lewinsky (McAvoy), sees it as the chance to nab the man who escaped his clutches three years earlier, and shot him in the leg. Max, whose leg sometimes plays up and sometimes doesn’t, depending on how much scenery he has to jump over, is one of those go-it-alone maverick cops as available, off the peg, from the Go It Alone Maverick Cop Shop (Oxford Street, just behind John Lewis).

3. Andrea Riseborough plays fellow cop, Sarah, who is also a Go It Alone Maverick Cop, perhaps because the Go It Alone Maverick Cop Shop sometimes does two-for-one offers. Beyond that, her role is limited, to say the least, and exists solely to serve the boys and all the macho action crap you’ve seen 45 billion times before.