Punisher: War Zone

I did not know they were making a new Punisher movie. I am sort of disappointed by the new Punisher.

Thomas Jane was an excellent punisher and why they changed it up is beyond me. The Punisher movie franchise does not have any sticking power with the Castle character. It is a new one every time. I guess Jane is too busy being a psycho two face in the Batman movie. Two face is dead so that is that. I wish Jane would have signed the deal for another Punisher movie.

Ray Stevenson is the new punisher who does his job. Perhaps Jane wanted too much money, whatever. But why would rewrite the story line? Just keep the story or same character's past and then have another Punisher actor if Jane did not want to make a sequel. If they kept the same storyline, then a fan base could build and this could compete with the Alien or Batman series. Now it is just another action movie, like Mark Walhberg's Max Payne, tossed into the fire, two weeks and out.

Frank Castle should have killed the villian but he cared more for the torture in a glass crushing machine.

Dominic West plays Jigsaw, since it appears his Frankenstein looking face was chopped up by a jigsaw. In essence, it was being twisted in all that glass. Like The Punisher, Jigsaw was a normal human but after a traumatic experience he is transformed into something worse. The terrible part, his nutcase brother is even worse. Castled chose to fight evil, ofcourse he was already doing that, West was mafia. His dramatic encounter with The Punisher only made him worse, he became more demented.

But this movie was pretty simple. Nothing special. Not even remotely close The Dark Knight or Iron Man. Not near Street Kings. And not as good as Jane's and Travolta's Punisher for four years ago.

When Jigsaw reaches across the table and stabs a man in the throat with a turkey temperature gauge, this is fake. No one is that quick and no other man in that line of business is that slow. The Russians want to bring in a biological agent into the city and sell it to the Islamic terrorists who live in Queens. That is right, this movie occurs in Queens.

This movie is poorly acted, has a weak story line, and filled with allot of violence. It will attract many young males which is it intentional demographic. But it is barely better than straight to video. Any wealthy organized criminal would not look like that, he would hire the top plastic surgeons who would make his face new and probably different. The latter result would not be for altruistic purposes. Perhaps some would turn over a new leaf and a start anew, realizing the errors of their ways. But that storyline is not what occurs here.

The Punisher should wear a mask in some of these fighting scenes for camoflauge purposes.

How Jigsaw breaks into a mental asylum and frees his brother is just too fantastical for me to contemplate. That hospital looked liked one that would be in Russia as well.

The Punisher wins in the end, killing all of the villians as expected.

Jerry Seinfeltd's antagonist in his stellar show in the 1990's, Newman had a role in this movie. Looked like he lost some weight.

I would allocate this movie one star. *