Punisher: War Zone

The year of comic book movies is almost to a close, after this there will be Will Eisner's the Spirit. Since I don't plan on seeing the Spirit, this is my last comic book movie of 2008. Well, as a person who created this thread, I can happily say, my movie year ended with a bang.

You may have caught the other two Punisher movies, the first being in 1989 with Dolph Lundgren playing our gun-totting good guy. The second being in 2004 with Thomas Jane. All of them were flops, and this one looks to be too, but I can say this version is my favorite.

If you've read the source material (which I STRONGLY encourage,) you'll know what you're getting into. It's violent, gory, has lots of black humour, and you can tell even from the beginning credits you can tell Lexi has major respect for it. You see what look like actual panels for those mentioned credits, many MAX and Marvel Knights characters come up including (but not limited to,) Microchip, Maginty, Pitttsy, even Tiberius and Cristu make an appearance, if you're an avid reader like I am, you can see references in damn near every scene.

With that said, the cinematography and lighting effects were all they could be. Some might say, myself included, that this looked like Disco was back and it made me want to taking off my shirt and go dancing in the fire escape. Truth be told it was really good, even in a certain scene I felt like panels from the book just came at me.

I did like Ray Stevenson as our dark depressing hero. He embodies it well, he's got the build and hair, although Thomas Jane had the voice. Dominic West does well as Jigsaw, he's nice and over-the-top, the way he should be, it's a hitman who gets disfigured in a glassing accident. He has to be pretty over-the-top. But topping that catagorey is Loony Bin Jim, played by Doug Hutchison. It was an actual delight to see a psycho played perfectly and seeing an actor having so much fun. Some other people in the cast are a little seen Wayne Knight as Punisher's assistant Microchip, and Dash Mihok as lovable loser Det. Martin Soap.

The script by Nick Santora, Matt Holloway, and Art Marcum, was pretty much the same thing. They did change some of the characters, but it wasn't the whole anal-rape-fest of the character like 2004's. They did write a lot of action, but when it did stop, an actual plot manifested, it kept moving. I did like the theme of The Punisher accidently killing an innocent but he rebounded to well for my liking. As far as the dialouge goes, and it was nothing horrible, but not exactly Casablanca calibur.

All in all, this is everything any fan of the Punisher, or violence could ever ask for.

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