12/9/08: Punisher: War Zone (2008)
The beginning of 2008 gave us
Cloverfield and Rambo. Now the year ends with the glorious grindhouse Christmas present of
Punisher: War Zone. You should still understand why we weren’t in a hurry to see this movie. Hollywood hasn’t done right by Marvel Comics’ most bloodthirsty vigilante. There was a
direct-to-video fiasco called
The Punisher with Dolph Lundgren back in 1988. [UPDATE: The comments section includes a correction on this one playing in theaters, and makes a sincere case for giving the film another chance.] Then we had the recent sad sight of Thomas Jane as a more proper Punisher in 2004’s big-screen disappointment. That movie turned The Punisher into some guy in a skull t-shirt who enjoyed hanging out with Ross, Rachel, Phoebe, Joey, Monica, and Chandler.
Jane made a big deal out of how he turned down returning in this sequel. We’ve got our own theory that someone looked at the script for
Punisher: War Zone and said, “We need a bigger Punisher.” Ray Stevenson is a lot more fitting as the instigator of some wonderfully overblown epic mayhem. The plot is exactly what any fan of the comic-book character should expect: The Punisher goes out and kills a bunch of criminals. As a bonus, one of them is the disfigured bad guy known as Jigsaw.
But we’re not writing up
Punisher: War Zone for all the instant death penalties and Second Amendment indulgences. Hollywood’s hypocritical enough to give us plenty of similar films that we routinely ignore. (Also, we’ve already knocked out
a review of
The Annihilator.) There are two other elements that make for truly bold filmmaking. One is the film’s only departure from the original comic character. The Punisher—whose real name is Frank Castle—has a little chat with his local priest. The priest is your typical Leftist creep trying to make Castle feel bad about the vigilante’s good work. We learn here that The Punisher was once in seminary. He’s always seemed like a man of God to us. This scene also has a great line that proves being sacrilegious doesn’t have to be some kind of Leftist pandering.
(We should add that we haven’t seen every Punisher comic, so maybe the notion of Castle as seminary student was addressed in one. The Punisher has gone through a lot of changes since we first enjoyed his 1974 debut in
The Amazing Spider-Man #129. The nadir was an attempt to portray him as a blathering psycho by—well, a certain comic book writer who deserves to be remembered for better things. Steven Grant took care of that in a subsequent miniseries, dismissing the mental breakdown as a plot by gangsters secretly drugging our hero.)
The other great thing about
Punisher: War Zone is the moral conflict. At the beginning of the film, Castle kills a mobster who turns out to be an undercover FBI agent. The Punisher is riddled with guilt over that. A lesser Hollywood production would’ve spent the rest of the film having Castle learn a valuable lesson about violence, ending with The Punisher attempting to spare the life of Jigsaw, but—of course—having to kill one last time before turning his back on violence forever.
Punisher: War Zone ends with Castle accepting that there’s a war between Good and Evil, and the occasional friendly fire is a fact of life. That’s not even rationalization. Another character has to explain all that to Castle. It’s a scene that makes for this holiday film season’s most heart-warming ending. There’s even a nice toasty fire.
Make it your own: Playing
in theaters now—but not for long, since
Punisher: War Zone bombed at the box office over the weekend. The critics weren’t kind. That’s why we went to see the film.
