British director Eran Creevy's slick thriller "Welcome to the Punch" stars Mark Strong as ex criminal Jacob Sternwood and James McAvoy as Max Lewinsky, the disgraced detective who is hunting him. Sternwood returns from his Icelandic hideout after his son is involved in a heist that goes wrong, giving Lewinsky one last chance at his quarry, James McAvoy explained what appealed to him about the film: "I think crime drama, gangster movie, all that stuff, makes you think of the usual stuff that Britain turns out when it does crime movies, you know what I mean? And it really isn't that. I love those films, don't get me wrong, but I think this is slightly different this one. It's very much a kind of cops and robbers movie, with a Hong Kong action slant, you know, but thriller - yeah, definitely. Visually the film is future-worldly and Creevy's interpretation of London owes more than a nod stylistically to US director Michael Mann. Creevy explained his thinking: "It's not about being literal to London, and kind of saying "here's the London Eye, here's Big Ben, here's The Gherkin." We've seen these in a million and one movies. It's about choosing a palette of color and texture - like glass, chrome, steel, skyscrapers and neon - and shooting a lot of the city at night, and I think we created something which is borderline sci-fi. "Welcome to the Punch" - the title is a reference to a location - is now playing in cinemas in the UK. More about: Cinema, Thriller, United Kingdom