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Visual:		2.0
Audio:		1.0
Acting:		2.0
Writing:		1.0
Score:		2.0

Director(s):	Lexi Alexander
Writer(s):	Nick Santora, Matt Holloway, Art Marcum
Starring:	Ray Stevenson • Dominic West • Julie Benz • Dash Mihok • Wayne Knight • Colin Salmon • Doug Hutchison
Genre:	Action
Release Date:	December 05, 2008
Rated:

In movies about vigilantism, often we see them treat the idea of their hero’s “justice” as moral ambiguity. Even the Punisher comic series written by Garth Ennis, of which this movie is primarily influenced by, portrays the character as a war veteran suffering a serious case of PTSD; a good guy at heart, but still a psychopathic killer all the same. Punisher: War Zone has no such hang ups. For the entire movie, it calls its title character a dangerous murderer, showing how destructive his “justice” is, and even giving him a reformed gangbanger as an ally to prove that second chances exist. Yet it still ends with Punisher massacring dozens of gangsters; his doubters realizing that he is indeed a hero and what he does is great. This is a guy who blows an unarmed goombah’s head off with a shotgun while hugging a little girl. The moral is not ambiguous, but it’s certainly confused.

It’s been six years since Frank Castle (Ray Stevenson) lost his family to a mob hit. In those six years, Castle has gutted, tortured, shot and blew up enough criminals to fill an entire police precinct’s basement with his murder files. The movie starts business-as-usual as Castle crashes a Mafia Don’s birthday party and kills everyone in sight. Without letting up, the Punisher—and the movie, as well—moves on directly to another massacre inside a warehouse owned by vain gangster Billy Russoti (Dominic West). Castle tosses him into a recycling machine, taking away his prized good looks, but unfortunately not his life. After his recovery, upon seeing a jigsaw puzzle on the Jumbotron, the vengeful mobster hilariously announces out loud, “Billy is dead! From now on, call me… Jigsaw!”

The phenomenally bad acting from everyone involved, especially the exaggerated accents, is the only thing entertaining to watch. Like some kind of spot-the-ethnicity party, the film manages to include whites, blacks, Italians, Russians, Asians, Latinos, and even one dreadlocked black dude with a thick Irish accent—all in complete stereotype mode. Dominic West, a Brit, who did a competent job hiding his English accent in The Wire, is so over-the-top it’s almost racist. His Jigsaw is like a comedy sketch about Tommy Lee Jones’ Two-Face trying to land a role on Goodfellas. One can only hope that it’s some kind of warped homage to Al Pacino’s silly Cuban accent in Scarface.

The film’s plot is so dumb and so blatantly insignificant that I wonder why they even bothered making it so convoluted. The FBI is involved, there’s a dead undercover agent, the agent’s vengeance-driven partner, the NYPD helping out the Punisher, there’s the Russian mob transporting bio weapons for Al Qaeda sleeper cells, then making deals with the Italians, Homeland Security making deals with them because they want to get Al Qaeda… What does all that shit matter? Not one bit, because the mechanics of the film is still as simple as Punisher in a video game, shooting his way up to the big bad boss.

When Jonathan Hensleigh’s The Punisher came out in 2004, some of the criticism from Punisher fans had to do with the setting. The character is known for operating in the gritty concrete jungle that is New York, not bright and sunny Florida. Punisher: War Zone is a reboot that aimed to fix that, but instead decorates almost every shot with candy colored filters. I guess grim and gritty went clubbing together. Lexi Alexander’s vision of New York have subways with green tunnels, doctor’s office with purple lights, stairs with bright orange handlebars and churches with neon crucifixes. I had to look over my shoulders a couple of times to make sure Joel Schumacher didn’t hijack the projection booth.

Acting, directing, cinematography, editing, and even music... It’s almost impressive how this movie manages to be terrible in everything. Its predecessor at least had a grasp of how action scenes work. War Zone’s idea of action is Ray Stevenson posing with a gun, cut to a montage of exploding heads. It doesn’t just endorse the killing of criminals, it relishes on the Troma-esque gory details of it, often lingering its shots to savor the bad guys' agony, while mocking those who disagree. One character tells the Punisher that he is against capital punishment. Three seconds later, he’s mugged and crying for Punisher to save him. Enter Frank Castle toting his big gun, as the movie makes a religious symbolism that compares him to Jesus Christ, equating his skull emblem to the Christian cross in terms of deliverance. I’m not sure how blasphemy works, but stupidity should be just as offensive.