Review: Punisher: War Zone

       Bad movies can be fun because usually they are poorly funded and because of that they lack the studio oversight that can prohibit creativity. They're allowed to deliver moments where they audience goes “Did that really just happen?” Bad movies like Rubber and Story of Ricky provide these moments in spades, but it's not that unexpected for films outside of the mainstream. Punisher: War Zone has many of these “did that just happen?” moments which is surprising for a major studio film. It's like someone tricked the studio head into letting an obscene, over the top level of violence happen in this movie. Other big budget movies that pull this off include Anaconda and Deep Blue Sea. Did Samuel L. Jackson really just get eaten by a shark and now another shark is coming along to tear off his head while the first shark swims away with the body? It's this level of insanity that we see in Punisher: War Zone. But what separates Punisher from other fun, bad movies is that it is very well made. It's incredibly well shot and well acted, and the special effects are all state of the art. It's still undeniably a bad movie, but it's a very, very good one, if that makes any sense.

       Punisher: War Zone is the story of Frank Castle (Ray Stevenson), a former marine turned vigilante after his family was murdered by the mob. This story takes place some time after those events, so the film takes little time to establish any meaningful exposition. In fact the first half hour or so is spent on Castle taking out the members of a crime family, including a long shot of him hanging upside down from a spinning chandelier while dual-wielding machine guns. Some of the mobsters get away, and Castle goes to track them down. They face off in some sort of industrial recycling factory. Castle socks the head mafioso, Billy the Beaut, into some sort of glass grinding machine and the baddie is shredded by shards of glass up to his neck. But Billy somehow survives and his face is pieced back together in a horrifying visage that would look at home in the next Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie. Because of this transformation, Billy now goes by Jigsaw and is determined to take down the Punisher. Meanwhile, Castle has to deal with an internal struggle after discovering that one of the mobsters he killed was an undercover FBI agent. Castle then has to protect the agent's widow and daughter from Jigsaw who want to find the money that he believes the agent stole from them.

       I've already mentioned some of the over the top violence that makes this movie so fun to watch, but I've left out a lot as well. There's one scene where The Punisher punches a guy's face off in one swift blow. It's insane. Wayne Knight (aka Newman from “Seinfeld”) plays Castle's arms supplier in what is one of the most unexpected casting choices I've ever seen. Ray Stevenson doesn't have many lines or show much emotion, he is just a cold-blooded killing machine. The movie is not heavy on plot, rather focusing on violence as its driving force. I was a little frustrated with one Chekov gun not going off. There is a lot of talk about some mysterious biological agent that can wipe out half of the city, so I was expecting the final conflict to revolve around the Punisher trying to stop some plan involving that device, but it never happens. Other than that, this film is very predictable, but it's still a bloody good time.