‘Punisher : War Zone’ (2008) Movie Review
“Punisher : War Zone” begins it’s first action scene with the Punisher , Frank Castle(Ray Stevenson) performing another punishing,grizzly hit on one of the mob family’s that he’s taking his revenge out on.It eventually ends with him taking out a group of them with a pair of machine guns while hanging upside down from a chandelier. A couple of the mobsters gets away including the main villain, Billy Russoti(Dominic West). Frank eventually catches up to him later that night and throws him into a glass cutting machine which mangles and cuts his face. After that the rest of the mob crew catch up to him and start blasting gun shots . Frank accidentally kills an FBI agent posing as a mobster.
This devastates him and also puts an FBI hunt on him which almost causes him to quit his punisher activities,but with some incouragement from his friend, Micro (Wayne Knight) he again realizes his purpose and that he needs to finish the job of eliminating Russoti who in fact barely survived that horrible glass cutting machine mangling. Russoti,now all torn up from the glass cutting machine wants to be called, Jigsaw. Him and a couple of his lackeys go to break his psycho brother,Loony Bin Jim(Doug Hutchison) out of the psyche house,but not without him ripping open the stomach and eating the guts of his fat caretaker (very graphic and disgusting). Jigsaw proceeds to break into the wife and child’s house of the dead FBI agent that Frank accidentally killed in an effort to retrieve some money that he thought he had kept there.
His attempts are foiled by the Punisher and lands him in jail. Jigsaw,however is able to strike a deal for immunity by giving up a group of mobsters he made a deal with earlier who were trying to import dangerous illegal stuff. Now,with revenge for Frank Castle heavy on his mind,he and his brother hire a whole gang of like minded amateur gun toting criminals to build an army to fight off Castle’s attack on him. Jigsaw, kidnaps the wife,kid,and his friend,Micro who he terrorized earlier to get Frank to come to their location for a supposed setup. In an awesome final scene, Frank goes through all of his men like dominoes and finishes his punishing job.
My Take : I thought it was a good action movie. It was a bit graphic at times with the gut eating,gun shots directly into the face at point blank range,and metal rods shoved right through a man’s neck at the drop of a hat for saying the wrong thing. All in all,though it had a good steady pace to it and the build up was very quick and understandable. There wasn’t a moment in the film where I wasn’t interested in what was going on. The duration wasn’t to long or to short at, 1:47 just under two hours. It told the story it needed to tell in convincing and rough fashion. I was very entertained and as I’ve stated in past reviews, that’s more than good enough for me.
Grade: B
Sounds awesome! I was wondering if Ray Stevenson plays a better “Punisher,” than Thomas Jane. I will have to go see it.
-Mike