Punisher: War Zone
Year: 2008
Director: Lexi Alexander
Starring: Dough Hutchison, Ray Stevenson & Dominic West
Runtime: 103 mins
BBFC: 18
Published: 04/09/23
Director: Lexi Alexander
Starring: Dough Hutchison, Ray Stevenson & Dominic West
Runtime: 103 mins
BBFC: 18
Published: 04/09/23
Despite the disappointing critical and commercial performance of 2004’s The Punisher, a sequel was tentatively planned with Jonathan Hensleigh returning to direct and Thomas Jane reprising his role as Frank Castle. But after the project sat in limbo for several years with scripts by Hensleigh being turned down at Lionsgate, a revolving door of directors were entering and leaving the project, and Thomas Jane refused to return due to the budget being cut back massively, the sequel transformed into a reboot. It should come as no surprise then that Punisher: War Zone received an even worse critical and commercial reception than the 2004 film, and once again tanked the franchise until Netflix acquired the character in the mid 2010’s. But I found the 2004 film to be surprisingly fun, so did I also get a good time from War Zone?
Five years after the murder of his family, Frank Castle (Ray Stevenson) is now known as the feared vigilante, the Punisher, who exacts his own brand of criminal justice against organised crime rings. After he storms the home of Don Cesare (John Dunn-Hill), Castle tracks down the new head of the crime family, Billy Russoti (Dominic West), and tosses him into a glass recycler to give him a painful and grisly death.
But when a heavily disfigured Russoti survives and adopts the moniker ‘Jigsaw’, he busts his psychotic brother, James (Doug Hutchison), out of the asylum and puts together an army to kill the Punisher.
Five years after the murder of his family, Frank Castle (Ray Stevenson) is now known as the feared vigilante, the Punisher, who exacts his own brand of criminal justice against organised crime rings. After he storms the home of Don Cesare (John Dunn-Hill), Castle tracks down the new head of the crime family, Billy Russoti (Dominic West), and tosses him into a glass recycler to give him a painful and grisly death.
But when a heavily disfigured Russoti survives and adopts the moniker ‘Jigsaw’, he busts his psychotic brother, James (Doug Hutchison), out of the asylum and puts together an army to kill the Punisher.
2004’s The Punisher was a bad movie that was fun because of the excessive action and magnetic performance from John Travolta. Punisher: War Zone unfortunately has smaller and less interesting actions sequences, and no good performances, only hilariously bad ones. War Zone is bloodier and nastier than its predecessor, leaning into the gore to compensate for it lacking in every other area. The result is a film that feels as though it’s trying to be edgy by just being mean spirited, taking cues from the torture porn sub-genre that was prevalent at the time.
It's choppily edited together, the story doesn’t make an awful lot of sense, and it looks cheap. The first film started out with this Miami Vice kind of vibe about a cop going undercover for drug busts, that then turned into something of a Die Hard clone come the second half. It may not have been an original personality, but it at least felt like Hensleigh knew what he wanted to do with the film. Lexi Alexander meanwhile, this feels like she had no idea what she wanted to do with the property, who it was for, or what the point of it all was. It’s just a collection of bad ideas or half-baked components thrown in a blender and the result is something that looks like main villain Jigsaw’s face.
I’m not going to give Punisher: War Zone the dignity of having any more of my time. Don’t watch it, there’s nothing of value or merit contained within its one-hundred-minute runtime. Incidentally there are worse Marvel Legacy films out there, Ghost Rider: Spirit of vengeance springs to mind, but War Zone isn’t much better. Clearly a film that should never have been made in the first place.
It's choppily edited together, the story doesn’t make an awful lot of sense, and it looks cheap. The first film started out with this Miami Vice kind of vibe about a cop going undercover for drug busts, that then turned into something of a Die Hard clone come the second half. It may not have been an original personality, but it at least felt like Hensleigh knew what he wanted to do with the film. Lexi Alexander meanwhile, this feels like she had no idea what she wanted to do with the property, who it was for, or what the point of it all was. It’s just a collection of bad ideas or half-baked components thrown in a blender and the result is something that looks like main villain Jigsaw’s face.
I’m not going to give Punisher: War Zone the dignity of having any more of my time. Don’t watch it, there’s nothing of value or merit contained within its one-hundred-minute runtime. Incidentally there are worse Marvel Legacy films out there, Ghost Rider: Spirit of vengeance springs to mind, but War Zone isn’t much better. Clearly a film that should never have been made in the first place.