Shhhh... I'm hunting wabbits.

Punisher: War Zone

June 3rd, 2010 in Featured by Bryan0 Comments

Vigilante behavior and comic books go together like peanut butter & chocolate. Deadpool, Rorschach, and Batman are but a drop in the chocolaty bucket. At the top of my personal list is The Punisher. I always found his hyper violent tendencies and ‘kill all criminals’ moral code fascinating and – dareIsay- cool.

Unfortunately his first film adventure was sorely lacking in brutality. It was like Punisher after a court ordered session of anger management. Allow me to paraphrase a scene from the first film:

- Scene Start : Pan to haggard looking criminal strapped to a table, struggling, with bare feet sticking off the edge of said table -

Punisher: You killed my family!
Criminal: They were collateral damage, but I enjoyed squeezing every ounce of life from them. *evil laugh*
Punisher: You fiend! You will wish you were never born! *pulls out a feather boa and ruthlessly tickles the criminals’ bare feet, eventually sending him into cardiac arrest*
Punisher: You broke my heart, and it’s about time I repaid the favor…

- Scene End -

As you can clearly see, the PG-13 rating cut the soul of Punisher out before it even had a chance. But this isn’t a review of the first film, so let’s fast forward 4 years. Marvel Comics, after coming out of the ‘what were we thinking’ hangover, decided that a 1 movie franchise needed a reboot to ignore the first one altogether. An R-rated, brutal remake.

John Whoo?
John Whoo?

On this front Punisher: War Zone clearly succeeds. 99% of on-screen deaths are covered in grisly, violent, grotesque, and glorious peanut butter & chocolate gore! Within the first 5 minutes there is 1 decapitation, 5 stabbings, and numerous flesh wounds inflicted by silverware. As if the statement, “I’m sorry the first movie exists” was written between the lines. And for this, I am grateful.

While the performances weren’t a complete insult, they were getting the benefit of the doubt before I even put the disk in the player. All the main characters are straight from the TV circuit, and it shows:

  • Punisher: Ray Stevenson – Rome
  • Jigsaw/Billy: Dominic West – The Wire
  • Loony Bin Jim: Doug Hutchison – Lost
  • Paul Budiansky: Colin Salmon – Shows you have never heard of

Thumb war playoffs.
Thumb war playoffs.

Aside from a good audio-track (DTS-HD: Master Audio FTW) it’s all so middle of the road. From the cinematography and directing, to the acting; it just doesn’t try that hard. As if the first film made the producers so gun-shy they decided to color by numbers.  In fact, the entire movie is merely a vehicle to move The Punisher to his next slaughter house.

But ultimately, is that what I wanted? It’s a gory, easy on the brain, action movie. I slid the disk in, reclined back, and laughed when people exploded. And damn it…. I LIKED IT!

To loosely quote the Herman’s Hermits, “Second verse, better than the first.”

Author: Bryan

Leave a Reply