"Punisher: War Zone"
"Oh God, now I've got brains splattered all over me," are the final words heard in "Punisher: War Zone."
The cop who utters that line likely will be the only person on record to accuse the ultraviolent "Punisher: War Zone" of an excess of brains. The most unanticipated sequel in, well, nine days ("Transporter 3" opened Nov. 26), "War Zone" replaces Thomas Jane -- the star of 2004's "The Punisher" -- with the even lesser-known Ray Stevenson and the awful first film's delusions of quality with a no-holds-barred blood mania that has become a hallmark of distributor Lionsgate, the modern exploitation company also responsible for "Saw," slices I-V.
Vigilante Frank Castle (Ray Stevenson) crashes a mob dinner in "Punisher: War Zone." Takashi Seida/Lionsgate
Waging his one-man war on the world of organized crime, ruthless vigilante-hero Frank Castle sets his sights on overeager mob boss Billy Russoti. After Russoti ...
Rating: R for pervasive strong brutal violence, language and some drug use
Length: 107 minutes
Released: December 5, 2008 Nationwide
Cast: Ray Stevenson, Dominic West, Julie Benz, Colin Salmon, Doug Hutchison
Director: Lexi Alexander
Writer: Matt Holloway, Art Marcum, Nick Santora
Like the films in that horror franchise, "Punisher: War Zone" is haunted by a maniac named Jigsaw (Dominic West). In this case, he's a vain, lowlife gangster, Billy the Beaut, who adopts a necessary new moniker after he falls onto a conveyor belt of broken glass that leads into a compacting bin with a whirring, man-sized, claw-shaped blade. (Every factory should have one.) A reconstruction effort that includes "strategically placed alloy plates... and just a little bit of horsehide," according to the surgeon, leaves Billy with a patchwork pan with more stitches than the Quilts of Gee's Bend -- a literal Scarface that seems
inspired by Lionel Atwill's ruined mug in 1933's "The Mystery of the Wax Museum."
Less charismatic than Jigsaw is the movie's dubious hero, Frank Castle (Stevenson was much more interesting as Titus Pullo on HBO's underrated "Rome"), a former Roman Catholic seminarian turned "crazed vigilante" by the mob murder of his wife and kids. Operating from a subterranean New York lair and living off of "egg-and-cheese MREs," Castle -- dressed in flexible black battle armor with an airbrushed skull on his chest -- now dedicates himself to "punishing" lawbreakers. (Sample punishments: Decapitation, impalement, neck-snapping and midair vaporization with rocket launcher.) "He does to those bastards what you and I can only fantasize about," says one admiring cop, whose fantasies apparently include hanging upside-down by his knees from a chandelier and spinning like a top with an automatic weapon in each hand while spraying a roomful of mobsters with bullets.
As fans know, the Punisher originated in a 1974 issue of "The Amazing Spider-Man," and has gone on to become one of Marvel Comics' more popular secondary characters -- a fact even Marvel seems somewhat embarrassed about: Unlike past Marvel adaptations, such as "Iron Man," "War Zone" is not a Marvel Entertainment production, according to the opening credits, but a "Marvel Knights" film. Apparently, the Knights subset will be to Marvel what Dimension Films was to Miramax: a way to make money from crummy pictures without degrading the parent company's brand.
Directed with verve by former World Karate and Kickboxing champion Lexi Alexander, "Punisher: War Zone" is a real throwback to the exploitation films of years past. With a body count to rival the Black Plague and a shameless embrace of such cliché lines as "See you in hell," the film makes almost no attempt to stimulate anything other than the most reptilian part of the brain or to appeal to a "mainstream" audience. (The first "Punisher" film cast John Travolta as the villain.) Even its moral speciousness (is Frank really "one of the good guys"?) and frequent tastelessness (the grotesque fate of an elderly woman merits a gooey closeup, and a very young girl is referred to as "a nice little piece of jailbait") are hallmarks of the vanished grindhouse and the endangered drive-in.
- John Beifuss: 529-2394
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