Punisher: War Zone is a laughable, low-budget debacle from start to finish. It’s ineptly written, acted, and directed. The actors seem miscast (Dominic West is truly awful as the cackling Jigsaw) and ill at ease with their roles. Director Lexi Alexander shows little of the promise she showed with her earlier work, Green Street Hooligans. The 2004 Punisher with Tom Jane was vastly underrated, and unlike this steaming turd, it at least felt like a professionally made feature film. Punisher: War Zone has only one redeeming trait to its name, it’s extremely bloody and gory. Gorehounds and fans of slasher porn will get their money’s worth with Punisher: War Zone, its a bloodbath.
Frank Castle (monotone and dull Ray Stevenson) is back to kill some more mobsters and he sets his sights on a mob boss named Billy Russoti. After he is disfigured, he seeks revenge on Castle under his new alias, Jigsaw. The film also has a subplot involving Frank protecting the mother and daughter of an FBI agent that Castle accidentally killed. Wayne Knight lends support as Micro, Castle’s friend and ally and Doug Hitchinson cackles and sneers nearly constantly as Jigsaw’s crazy brother. Dominic West deserves special mention for his broad and heavily accented performance as Jigsaw, one of the worst screen performances in many years. The cheap makeup doesn’t help matters much.
If the film isn’t very good (to put it mildly), the 2 DVD set is fairly nice. The widescreen transfer looks solid and the audio is clear and loud. The special features include some nice featurettes and a frank commentary with director Lexi Alexander about the budget constraints of making the film. The commentary is good while the featurettes are short and average at best.
Punisher: War Zone has some nice extras but the film itself is wildly uneven. The broad comedic tone goes nowhere fast while the more dramatic scenes seem out of place. There is no need to buy the 2 DVD set unless you need a digital copy of the film. Punisher: War Zone isn’t the worst comic book film ever made, but its a film best seen once then forgotten. The only people this gory, unrealistic mess punishes are its intended audience of fanboys. They are better off watching a SAW film than this annoying, hulking drip brood in his Hot Topic skull shirt.
DVD Grade: C-
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Mike
Mar 23, 2009 -
Newman!!!!!! as Mircochip!!! That’s not that bad a casting. The rest of the movie sound’s horrible. I think Marvel becoming its own film production studio was one of the worst ideas. Not that Iron Man sucked, but it seem this well lead to the eventually whoring out of every character in the Marvel Universe.
Mongoose
Mar 26, 2009 -
I totally agree with this review. I saw the first hour of this movie, and it was horrible. I got friends that were saying that this was a great movie, bla bla bla. Wrong, this movie sucked. I was a fan of the first one, even though he was emo, but at least he was smart. This new guy has no personality, he just runs around like a caveman. From the first hour that I saw, i’d give it a D. Maybe if I watched the whole movie, it’d be an F.
Cricket
Mar 26, 2009 -
I don’t know why they can never get the character right. He’s not complex, his family gets killed and wants revenge. Is it really that hard to make an entertaining movie out of it? It seems like the filmmakers always find a way to make a crappy movie out of the character.
Paladin
Mar 26, 2009 -
Now then…that review matched what I saw–the best part was after hitting the STOP button on the DVD player!
The first movie was very good though, well balanced and entertaining.
Magnus782
Apr 9, 2009 -
”Punisher: War Zone” was an awful comic book film, but I’ve seen worse. The film definitely hit the nail with the blood gore and casting an actor who looks exactly like Punisher from the comic books, but every other aspect of the film is laughable. The creepy ”bromance” between Jigsaw and his psychotic brother had me longing for the days of Joker and Bob the Goon from ”Batman.”