Welcome to the Punch

I was honestly baffled by the title on the movie posters I saw the last time I was at the local cineplex. So much so that I had to look it up. Probably not such a great idea - it was panned by the IMDb crowd (if you thought YouTube comments were juvenile, check out IMDb message boards). Luckily The Star had a free screening for Welcome to the Punch on Tuesday night, as I wasn't sure that I would've paid to watch this, even though I'm a bit of a McAvoy fangirl.

What I was baffled by was the long line at the lobby when I got there before 7 p.m. (ticket collection was supposed to be at 7.30 p.m.), which mostly consists of warga emas and the hearing impaired (? based on all the signing I saw when I was in line). 

It's supposed to be the English version of the HK cop/criminal movie (the "you shoot me, so I want to catch you but not kill you because I still have morals, etc"), but I haven't seen enough of the HK cop movies to recognise the tropes myself. But I could believe that I SUPPOSE... 

• McAvoy has a weird-coloured beard... if he hasn't dyed it or what.
• Mark Strong should not show his teeth, like EVER. But him shirtless (doing pushups, no less) with a back tattoo? Wah lau.
• You knew she was gonna be dead when she did such a lousy job of tailing one of the bad guys.

There's not enough backstory for the movie to stand on its own, and the ending is annoyingly baiting for a sequel which will never happen. I wouldn't pay to watch this (not after spending RM4 in parking -_-").