Punisher: War Zone

“Ex-Special Forces officer Frank Castle (Ray Stevenson, ‘Rome’) is back with all guns blazing as The Punisher, this time waging a one-man war on two fronts. While targeting the vicious mob boss, Billy Russoti, Castle horribly disfigured the gangster in a firefight that also claims the life of an undercover FBI agent. Seeking terrible vengeance, Russoti takes the name ‘Jigsaw’ and begins recruiting the underworld’s most notorious criminals while the Feds form an anti-vigilante Strike Force. Now The Punisher must find a way to elude the law and decimate Jigsaw’s deadly crime army in this adrenaline-packed action-thriller.”

That is the official synopsis straight from the back of the Blu-Ray and I have to say, it isn’t entirely honest. This very well may be what they were wanting to go for with Warzone though what we get is just an awkward mess of a plot. While there is a “strike force” whose goal is to take down The Punisher they don’t actually do anything. One of the members is secretly working with him and the other one gives up the chase for Punisher after their first encounter and teams up with him. To say that he is fighting a war on two fronts is entirely misleading.

From scene to scene the characters seem like they have little to no clue as to what they are doing or why they are doing it, motivation is none existent for every character except for three. The Punisher, Jigsaw and the FBI agent Budiansky all are simply fueled by revenge. Though there isn’t much to say as to the thought behind the characters or even the thoughts that the characters have because they both seem to be non-existent. Regardless, the individual characters are so dumb that I feel the need to talk about them individually.

First, The Punisher. The Punisher in War Zone is honestly just an empty husk who kills people. He just enters buildings, alleyways, etc. and walks through with a plethora of guns killing everyone who is there as they patiently wait their turn. The vast majority of the enemies really don’t put up a fight. This makes for some pretty lame action with zero stakes. Even if I thought there was a possibility that he could die it wouldn’t matter, we are given no reason to care about him. He even hardly interacts with those who he is friends with. There was a part where the character almost had some emotional depth after expressing his remorse for accidentally killing an FBI agent who had a family, though that moment was quickly dismissed. He is just an entirely uninteresting character.

Next, Micro. Micro is played by Wayne Knight (always great to see Wayne Knight) and his character exists for two reasons. To provide moral support to The Punisher and to be bait at the end of the film. That is about it, moving on.  

Angela and her daughter. Janusauskas was a child at the time and I’m sure she was trying her best but Benz did nothing other than look angry. There were no signs of real emotion with her and she had the cringiest line of 2008, “Who punishes you?”

Billy “Jigsaw” Russoti, the main villain of the movie. He starts off as an enforcer for a crime family, though once that family is wiped out (in the very first scene of the movie) the Punisher mutilates him in a bottle crushing machine. The Punisher expected him to die though he survived with “not a square inch of skin left unscathed” which honestly wasn’t a bad makeup job. Though shortly after he gives his personal plastic surgeon to fix him up, although the result was supposed to be a horrifying skin graft nightmare of sown together patches of skin. Kinda like a quilt from hell type of deal. Though what we got was some makeup that looked pathetic. Now that his face is messed up he breaks his brother (Looney Bin Jim) out of the psych ward and sets out to get his revenge on The Punisher.

Looney Bin Jim was the brother of Jigsaw and his thing is that he is crazy, hence the name. He is also a cannibal considering he bit one man until he died and he bit The Punisher a fair amount as well. The best thing about Looney Bin Jim is that he did a perfect impression of Kevin Malone from the Office. At least I hope that is what they were going for and they didn’t seriously think that it was a good idea to make this character sound that way.

There are a few other side characters that are present as well but most of them don’t even get their own odd quirk, there really isn’t a need to talk about them. Though you get the point, the characters are insignificant.

I tend to not be a big fan of action movies, as the plots are often paper thin, the characters lazily are written, and even the action itself tends to be rather bland by just throwing in lots of quick cuts with explosions. This exemplifies the worst parts of the average action movie. One thing that often leads me to forgive action movies for their transgressions is well-choreographed fight scenes. Fights like those in the first Kingsmen movie and the John Wick movies put the time and effort into their fight scenes to the point where they are almost the equivalent of a dance. Now that is something that is not at all present in Punisher: War Zone, as the fights are boring and are generally not the most thought out fights.

Bottom Line:

In the end, this movie is simply boring and drawn out for its 103 minute runtime. Despite being a 4K Blu-Ray, the quality was more comparable to that of a DVD. If you’re wanting to purchase a 4K re-release from 2008, do yourself a favor and get The Dark Knight, as the quality seems to achieve a more 4K acceptable level, without graininess and such.

Lastly, I felt the need to share this as an example of the incoherence of the movie. In the first act, there were a few scenes that were purely 30-45 seconds of punk music playing and bad guys running around on the roofs of buildings doing flips and whatnot. One of them ended like this:

This would have honestly been a really amusing scene, though the tone is completely serious after. As if what just happened wasn’t at all silly. Final verdict: The movie was bad, and the 4K not up to snuff.