Punisher : War Zone (2008) | REVIEW

It's been a pretty long time since I've had a review up. My apologies (I say that a lot these days). I'm literally drowning in work, work, and more work...plus I'm up to a couple of new projects that I haven't really decided on yet. Anyway, I managed to allocate some time to watch Punisher : War Zone on DVD the other day since I've been wanting to for quite some time, and I hate to say this but Marvel &^$$%-up yet again. I guess you can't really expect much from a movie like Punisher but I had my hopes up for a few reasons. [a] Lexi Alexander; if you've seen Green Street Hooligans you know what I'm talking about. The lady knows what violence is. [b] Ray Stevenson; I'm not hating on Thomas Jane but this dude looks like he was born to play Frank Castle. [c] A solid [R] rating; meaning there's all the room for the revenge-crazed vigilante to do all the bodily damage he wants to on his foes. Anyway...

This Flick Is About....
Punisher : War Zone stars Ray Stevenson as the vigilante who's avenging the tragic deaths of his entire family by a group of mobsters. The ex-army personnel has a high-tech infantry of weapons at his disposal and plans on doing whatever it takes to mark and exterminate all the scum that made him the loner that he is today. Punisher : War Zone is not a direct sequel to the first Punisher movie starring Thomas Jane, but isn't an origin story either. In this installment, Frank Castle must take down the 'resurrected' villain known as Jigsaw, a criminal mastermind whom Punisher disfigured.
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While I'm not a big fan of movies like Rambo and typical 'actioners', I enjoy movies that have good fight sequences to offer, especially those that are choreographed so well that every move works in a flow, causing the next strike and acting as a reaction to the previous action. The Incredible Hulk had amazing action sequences. It wasn't just shaky, fast-moving cameras. It was more precise, focused, and like a series of moves that were sewn together so well that they formed a whole beautiful (if that's what you wanna' call it) scene. 300 did the same thing, with sheer awesomeness. Punisher could have done the same thing, but decided not to. When people kept saying the new Punisher was awesome in terms of violence and gore, it had me excited. Not that I'm a sicko or anything, but because that's exactly what the Punisher does. I have to admit, the movie does have it's cool parts that are awfully gritty and violent and just plain scary, but those scenes are not even close to being enough to save this flick.

What the Punisher does have, in fact, are very brief scenes of terribly violent actions. That's it. No good fight scenes, no slow-mo beautiful shots, no clever camera angles. It just has short moments of the Punisher blowing some guy's head off or decapitating someone or shoving a chair into a person's skull. And while those scenes successfully make you say "Woah!", it only lasts as long as it stays on screen and the residual value is incredibly small. Once that's done it's back to square one; boredom.

The score for the movie is very nice. It reminds me of Batman Begins. But then again, not every movie demands a James Newton Howard-ish score. The Punisher needs a grungier soundtrack. And while some scenes are backed by hardcore metal tracks from the likes of Slipknot, a lot of scenes have very emotional, orchestral music that doesn't fit. Punisher needs a soundtrack like 300; powerful, gritty, grungy, and not one like The Lion King.

The acting (my God) is bad. Ray Stevenson does an okay job I suppose. The Punisher isn't really a very charismatic character so I guess it's fine. Dominic West plays Jigsaw which was a good call because he's able to handle the character well. Then there's Wayne Knight who plays 'Micro', and he's fine. As for the rest, it's just a barrage of mediocre 'I'm-trying-too-hard' type acting that easily puts you off. Julie Benz is by far the worst. She looks like she's reading off a blurry teleprompter that's too far away.

Doug Hutchison plays 'Loony Bin' Jim, Jigsaw's brother, who's a psycho mental patient. He manages to pull-off the psycho part well but when it comes to the dialogue and the accent, it just bothers me. I suppose since they're all in a mob it's supposed to be one of those 'New York-ish', Italian-ish, accents. Whenever Looney Bin talks, though, I'm not sure if he's really Italian or half-Hispanic or semi-English or just plain Irish. It's really annoying listening to him speak. You want Punisher to walk in there and blow his jaw right off not because he's a bad guy but because the way he speaks is just really, really annoying. I'm not sure if it's just me, though. Maybe one day he'll be honored with a Nobel prize for uniting the world by merging every accent known to man in one sentence of speech. Hmm.

You're probably wondering, "Is Punisher a fun movie at all?" The answer is "somewhat". By that I mean it depends on your mood and situation at the time. If you rented a bunch of movies from NetFlix and your list has The International, 12 Rounds, Halloween, and Punisher : War Zone, I suggest you watch all the other movies first and then see if you still have time for Punisher. Whereas if your list has Rogue, Street Fighter : Legend Of Chun-Li This Movie Is So Damn Bad, The Grudge 3, and Punisher : War Zone, then Punisher ranks as the first movie you should watch. It's a gem among bad movies, is what I'm saying. I like the colors and it's fun when you have time to spare on a free day. With work on your hands though, this movie is a waste of time.

On a whole, Marvel and Lionsgate blew it again with yet another Punisher movie. To be fair, Punisher isn't really a very interesting character to begin with, but he's definitely more badass than what Ray Stevenson had to offer. While he looked the role, he was incredibly laid-back for a man who had his family gunned down and is on the path of absolute vengeance. There's also some subliminal message about God and religion and how killing for a just cause is fine and whatnot. I wasn't really interested nor did I have the time to decipher a message that a movie like Punisher had to offer.
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Wrap : I give Punisher : War Zone a 2.0 out of 5.0. It had its moments, it's a good movie to watch when there's nothing else to do, and the color / tonal value of the flick was nice to see. The acting was bad, storyline was terrible, and the violence wasn't what I expected it to be. There's artistic violence and just plain "Yikes" moments, and Punisher had a lot of the latter. Like I said, this is a movie you could do without if you can't find the time. There are a lot of better films out there.