London’s the star of glossy thriller

 
P27 James McAvoy
15 March 2013

Film-maker Eran Creevy has gone from the micro-budget grit of his acclaimed debut, Shifty, to a high-gloss action thriller with a crack British cast for his new release — but he wants London to be the real star.

Welcome To The Punch stars James McAvoy, Mark Strong and Andrea Riseborough and the budget, at £5.2 million, was more than 50 times what it took to make Shifty.

Writer-director Creevy’s script so impressed Sir Ridley Scott, director of Blade Runner and Alien, that he hit the phones himself to help get it made.

Creevy, 36, said the new film — shot mainly amid the steel and concrete of Canary Wharf — epitomises his hopes of creating a glossy Hollywood-style genre of action thriller. “I wanted to make London look sexy and make a more aspirational level of cinema that we don’t always get,” he said.

“After Shifty it would have been very easy for me to make another gritty, socio-realistic drama. But I hope I can make commercial cinema in this country that has a broader appeal. Sometimes we can be very literal in how we portray things... American movies often look more cinematic.”

McAvoy plays a detective embroiled in a political scandal involving police corruption. Mark Strong and Peter Mullan play gangsters who, admits Creevy, “talk to each other in gravelly voices”, but he hopes he has emulated the heightened visual impact of directors such as Jerry Bruckheimer.

Creevy, who lives in east London, was a runner in Soho before progressing to ads and videos, and then making Shifty for £100,000 under Film London’s Microwave scheme for young film-makers. The new film, while involving a big jump in budget, would have cost 10 times more to make in the US.

Strong was “intrigued” by Creevy’s bid “to create a world of cops and robbers that is more exotic than we are used to” in the UK, where The Bill remains the model for many a police drama. “We largely don’t make action movies in this country because they’re incredibly expensive but Eran has rather magically been able to pull this off. I like the ambition he shows for British film.”

Welcome To The Punch is released on March 15.

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