Punisher: War Zone - Third Time's A Charm?

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I’m a Punisher fan. I’m a comic book nerd.  I read comic books.  I collect comic books.  I have every issue of The Punisher.  I even own a copy of his first appearance in Amazing Spiderman #129.  I don’t say this to brag (if it can even be called “bragging”).  I say it in the spirit of full disclosure in order to give you insight as to how I might take in a movie of this nature.  I’m not put off by the over-the-top violence.  I recognize the fact that The Punisher is as much a parody of violence as it is a glorification of it.  It’s a revenge fantasy writ large.  I totally get it and am completely on board with the concept.  So let me get straight to the point:
Yuck.

What a dreary, dreadfully insipid movie.  Punisher: War Zone is without a doubt the worst movie I’ve reviewed so far.  I see movies for free and I still wanted my money back.  Nothing in this film works.  The acting, the staging, the set design, the story…nothing.  It’s an ugly, vile, mean-spirited film.

The story is virtually non-existent.  Frank Castle (aka The Punisher) is waging a one man war against crime after his family was caught in the crossfire of a mob shootout.  This time out The Punisher is played by Ray Stevenson.  This is the 3^rd attempt to make this franchise work.  (And, just for the record, this is not a sequel to 2004’s The Punisher.)  The film opens with Castle killing virtually all of the heads of New York’s various crime “families.”  In the process he leaves one alive but severely wounded.  His name is Billy Russoti (played by Dominic West).  His face is mangled and reconstructed (poorly) by a back-alley plastic surgeon.  So he takes the name Jigsaw.  Why?  Because that’s what people do in these things.  In the realm of comic books, taking a name of this sort makes sense.  It’s part of the genre.  But cinematically, The Punisher doesn’t share a world with Spiderman and Captain America.  So it seems rather silly for a random mob boss to suddenly adopt a villainous nom de plume. 

After being released from back alley post-op, Jigsaw frees his even crazier brother, a cannibal that goes by the name of Looney Bin Jim (played by Doug Hutchison).  From there, Jigsaw’s mob goes on a killing spree to recover money and draw out The Punisher.

Castle has been reduced to a virtually silent, vigilante golem.  He doesn’t speak until almost a half-hour into the film.  It’s one of the movie’s highlights.  There is hardly a single performance that works.  Dominic West as Jigsaw would be more at home in a Damon Runyon story.  If not for the hyper-violence, his performance would be perfectly at home in Batman…the TV show.  Doug Hutchison’s fey interpretation of Looney Bin Jim feels like he stepped out of some sort of community theater production of Silence Of The Lambs.  And Dash Mihok’s rendition of Detective Soap, a weak-kneed officer assigned the task of arresting The Punisher, seems to have been designed for some sort of Saturday morning cartoon version called Punisher Adventures that would air between Dragonball Z and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  It’s as if every major character each thought they were making a completely different movie.  As for Ray Stevenson as The Punisher, it’s hard to say.  Not much is required of him beyond being stoic and shooting people…not necessarily in that order.

And for a movie with so little plot, there are so many plot holes.  Jigsaw is a mob boss but he has literally two guys in his mob.  He has to go scrounging up random street thugs in order for there to be enough cannon fodder for the movie’s final showdown.  And after Castle accidentally kills an undercover FBI agent he is so distraught that he gives up being The Punisher…for 15 seconds  And why does every building in the movie, regardless of how rundown, dilapidated and clearly abandoned it is, have a brand new, brightly lit sign declaring its name?

This is essentially a slasher flick where we’re supposed to root for the slasher.  (After all, is there really a difference between Michael Myers and Frank Castle other than their victims?)  The effects are more in-line with a slasher flick than they are with a traditional action movie.  It’s a unique take and, honestly, it might be the movie’s only positive attribute.  And that’s a pretty sad thing.

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being Death Wish and 1 being Death Wish 5: The Face Of Death, Punisher: War Zone gets a 2.

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