Punisher: War Zone Film Review

Punisher: War Zone - "Sometimes I would like to get my hands on God"

This 2008 abortion of a sequel to Jonathan Hensleigh's very dramatic & thrilling version of "The Punisher" with Thomas Jane should never have been made. There's no case to be made in defense of this infuriatingly bad film. Frank Castle the Punisher is back except with a different actor because Thomas Jane took one look at this script and said.....no. Ray Stevenson replaces him and tries to deliver on the coat-tails of a script that could have been written by M. Night Shyamalan & Adam Sandler. This time Frank Castle faces the villain Jigsaw played by Dominic West, who in his own right is very good actor, hell he was in HBO's "The Wire". He is of British descent & is required to put on a New York accent that is so horribly cringe worthy that it could have been a comedy skit & an insult to all New Yorkers.

The complete lack of a plot left the director Lexi Alexander nothing to do than to put a gun in Ray Stevenson's hand and say "Shoot everyone on screen, we'll call it entertainment". I like Ray Stevenson as an actor he's fantastic in "Rome, Book of Eli, Dexter, Thor & King Arthur. But he was just not able to evoke the same amount of guilt & agony that Thomas Jane did in his Punisher film. The complete lack of logic in this film is startling, the way scenes play out is confusing, one minute the ball is in his corner where absolutely nothing could go wrong for him & he just let's the multitude of bad guy's slip away. The police force in this film are basically "The Three Stooges" slapstick humor and all. A completely useless aspect of the film.

One positive would be the casting of Wayne Knight (Newman from Seinfeld) as "Micro" who in the comics is the chief supplier of weaponry for Frank Castle, his friendship provided ONE scene of good dialogue but again he was poorly misused by the director who at the time had one other credit to her name "Green Street Hooligans". By all means a decent film but she was 23 years old and given $35 million to direct a brutal action sequel and failed miserably. Why take that risk as a studio? At no point in the film is Frank ever in a situation where he really is in danger, he is bullet proof, and the villain (if you can call him that) has absolutely no combat training whatsoever and poses no threat to Frank at all, and the only reason conflict arises is because Jigsaw kidnaps a family that Frank Castles owes a debt to.

It's over the top, unwatchable, not a thespian in sight & poorly directed. They somehow ruin the setting of New York and it's frustrating to see a once promising franchise get flushed down the toilet. We can all take solace in the fact that the film rights to the Punisher have reverted back to Marvel Studios and that in 2014 The Punisher will make a come-back. Thomas Jane last year made a short independent film called "Dirty Laundry" with Ron Perlman where he reprises his role as Frank Castle and that short 10 minute film is light years ahead of this studio funded garbage 1.5/10. Link here http://youtu.be/bWpK0wsnitc