"Punisher: War Zone" represents the third and final Punisher film to date and is probably one of the most notorious Marvel commercial flops of the last decade, making less than a third of its budget back. Made in conjunction with Lionsgate, it was meant to launch the "Marvel Knights" series of darker more adult-oriented films but the idea was quickly abandoned although I s'pose you could argue its spirit lives on via the blood and guts approach of the Marvel Hells Kitchen serials (Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist and most recently the new Punisher series itself).
The genesis of the film was an awkward one - it originally started life as a sequel to the 2004 Punisher film starring Thomas Jane but the production quickly got bogged down in difficulties leading Jane to walk out on the series and the film to turn into a reboot. British actor Ray Stevenson would sign on for the title role with another Brit, Dominic West from "The Wire", playing his nemesis Billy "Jigsaw" Russotti. As with both of the other two Punisher films, despite getting mediocre reviews, there are a group of die-hards who swear by it so let's see how it bears up...
The film is set five years after the first Punisher film (although Castle's backstory is rewritten here to make it more consistent with the comic books - his family was killed in a botched Mafia hit in Central Park and since then he's been on the road for extremely bloody vengeance). It opens with veteran Mafia don Cesare discussing a potential smuggling deal with one of his henchmen Billy "The Beaut" Russotti who wants to use his warehouse facilities to help a group of Russian mafiosi smuggle a chemical weapon into New York.
Cesare refuses to back Russotti who leaves the house in a huff with his men just as the host and his guests are settling down to dinner. However, their meal is rudely interrupted by Frank Castle - cue the blood and guts. I should point out by the way that this film ratchets up the violence even further than the 2004 one did and is most definitely not for the squeamish. Unfortunately therein lies its main problem - lord knows I've seen enough violent Marvel stuff in recent years but there comes a point where you can over-saturate it to the point where it stops being entertaining and crosses over into just being downright depressing and "War Zone" just blunders over that line without any subtlety whatsoever. Shame.
We find out that Castle has an agreement with the local cops who are happy to let him wreak his vengeance on the criminal fraternity as it makes their lives easier. One of the two cops who've been staking out the house, Saffiotti, tips him off about Russotti heading for the docks before punching himself in the nose to make it look to his partner Soap as if he's been ambushed by the Punisher.
Russotti and his goons, Ink, Pittsy and Donatelli, head for a bottle plant at the docks where they reach an agreement to do the deal with the Russians given that everyone else in their familia has now been shot. We also find out they've got a group of drug-addled parkour-obsessed goons led by the dreadlocked McGinty who work as their underlings. However, when Castle arrives, it's time for the villains to scram - Ink and Pittsy escape while McGinty and his crew do a runner across the rooftops. However, Russotti and Donatelli are left inside with Castle shooting the latter and the former being knocked into a glass crusher which Frank switches on before walking away. However, upon hiding behind Donatelli's body he realises that Donatelli was an undercover FBI agent trailing Russotti's gang.
This leads Castle to have a crisis of confidence and initially he visits Donatelli's widow and daughter to try and pay them some financial compensation but they give him short shrift and turn him down. Crestfallen, Frank tells his associates Microchip (his tech nerd helper) and Carlos (a former crim who's now crossed over to the good guys' side) that he's getting out of the vengeance game for good and leaving town. However, when they tell him that Russotti survived and is likely to come after the Donatelli family, he realises he's got a job to do to protect them.
Russotti, meanwhile, has been busy planning revenge. Although he survived, the resulting surgery has left him so badly disfigured that his face has several stitch lines in it leading him to take the new name Jigsaw. His first move is to re-recruit Ink and Pittsy and bust his cannibalistic brother Loony Bin Jim out of the local asylum (where he eats the guard who's been tormenting him's kidneys - yuck) and head to the Donatelli household to look for the money he believes the agent stole from him.
Meanwhile back at the police station, Donatelli's old FBI partner Budiansky has turned up and requested to be assigned to the Punisher Task Force. Which, as we find out, only consists of Soap who we saw on the raid earlier. The Punisher himself, meanwhile, is off tracking down Jigsaw's gang one by one starting with McGinty. When he hears news from the cops that the parkour gang have just robbed a convenience store, he promptly heads to the rooftops, blows two of them up with a missile before kneecapping McGinty. Once he's got the information he needs off him, he pushes him off the rooftop to be impaled on some railings...ouch!
Budiansky and Soap have also been alerted to the robbery and the former gets into a fight with Castle and eventually apprehends him. Castle warns them that Jigsaw and his gang have headed over to the Donatelli residence. A police car is duly dispatched there but Jim quickly offs both of the officers when they enter the house. Realising something's up, Budiansky heads over there himself but is quickly apprehended by Jigsaw when he threatens to shoot the two hostages. Leaving Ink and Pittsy to guard the prisoners, Jigsaw and Jim go to search the house. However, Castle persuades Soap (who's been trailing him for a few years and has gained a grudging respect for him through his case) to let him go and breaks into the house, punching Ink so hard that he caves his skull in before blowing Pittsy's head off with a shotgun and escaping with the Donatellis. Budiansky radios the other cops who promptly turn up and arrest Jigsaw and Jim.
However, the Russotti brothers manage to negotiate a deal with the FBI to gain diplomatic immunity by grassing up the Bulat brothers, who they were due to do a deal with over the chemical weapon meaning that when Jigsaw and Jim turn up to seal the deal, the Rooskies quickly find themselves cuffed and carted off in a helicopter.
Now freed and with their money returned to them, the Russottis decide to finish the job by getting vengeance on Castle. They manage to locate his hideout midway down a subway tunnel leading to Jim kidnapping the Donatellis again as well as critically injuring Carlos with an axe while Jigsaw heads to Microchip's house and kidnaps him as well as killing his vegetative mother. Castle returns to his lair to find Carlos bleeding to death there and agrees to put him out of his misery.
The Russottis hole up in an abandoned hotel and recruit a motley collection of hood thugs, Yakuza and Irish gangsters to protect them. Realising he has no-one else to turn to, Castle goes back to Budiansky and Soap and strikes a deal with them to help him. They approach the remainder of the Russian gangsters who Jigsaw was initially doing a deal with and strike a deal whereby they attack in the ground floor leaving Castle clear to enter the building further up. After the expected bloodshed, Castle takes on Loony Bin Jim and beats him up to the extent that he goes scurrying off back to Jigsaw.
Jigsaw and Castle have their big confrontation in the hotel's penthouse suite with Jim holding a gun to the Donatellis' heads and Jigsaw doing the same to Micro forcing Frank to choose. Instead though, Frank shoots Jim dead leading Jigsaw to do the same to Micro. Castle and Jigsaw then have their big climactic (well not that climactic to be honest) fight which ends with Jigsaw being impaled on a metal rod and thrown on a fire. Afterwards, Castle returns the Donatellis to Budiansky to keep them safe and heads off for a drink with Soap, stopping only to blow the head off a mugger who threatens the cop en route. The end.
I know I seem to say this after every Punisher film but good lord that was grim. I see what Lionsgate were trying to do here but as I said earlier, by upping the ultraviolence quota at the expense of the plot, it makes "War Zone" a real slog to get through. Eventually the nonstop bloodshed stops being cool and just becomes boring and depressing and it really makes the latter stages of this film difficult going. Not even because of how violent it is, just because you end up thinking "oh...more people getting their heads blown off by shotguns. Right. Sigh...here we go again..." To be honest, while none of the three Punisher films are exactly classics, I would say that this one just to say takes the award for being the worst of the three. It's not especially terrible but it's depressing and dull enough to be below average, that's for sure.
As we mentioned earlier, "War Zone" bombed horrifically at the box office and the Punisher promptly returned in-house to the MCU, first appearing as a character in season 2 of "Daredevil" before being given his own series. Although still incredibly bleak, it did at least mark a step up from the movies with Jon Bernthal portraying the role well and enough of a plot to back up the carnage. Similarly, although the Marvel Knights series died a death here, the general premise of a series of darker and more adult-themed Marvel visual material did eventually come to fruition with the Hells Kitchen serials on Marvel. And, funnily enough, we will be seeing Ray Stevenson again on Marvel Mondays in a very different role as Falstag in the Thor films. As for "War Zone" though - I guess hardcore gorehounds may find something to watch here but a combination of a thin plot, below-par acting and overdoing the bloodshed to the level that it just becomes repetitive mean that this one can be safely skipped.
FINAL RATING: 💀💀💀💀 (4/10)
CURRENT MARVEL FILM TABLE
1. Iron Man (2008) (10/10)
2. Spiderman 2 (2004) (9/10)
3. Spiderman (2002) (9/10)
4. X-Men 2 (2002) (8/10)
5. Men In Black (1997) (8/10)
6. X-Men (2000) (8/10)
7. The Incredible Hulk (2008) (7/10)
8. Blade 2 (2001) (7/10)
9. Blade (1998) (7/10)
10. The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988) (6/10)
11. Spiderman 3 (2007) (6/10)
12. Fantastic Four - Rise Of The Silver Surfer (6/10)
13. The Trial Of The Incredible Hulk (1989) (6/10)
14. The Punisher (2004) (6/10)
15. Conan The Barbarian (1982) (6/10)
16. Elektra (2005) (6/10)
17. Conan The Destroyer (1984) (6/10)
18. X-Men: Last Stand (2006) (6/10)
19. Blade Trinity (2004) (6/10)
20. Men In Black 2 (2000) (6/10)
21. The Incredible Hulk (1977) (5/10)
22. The Fantastic Four (2005) (5/10)
23. Doctor Mordrid (1992) (5/10)
24. The Punisher (1989) (5/10)
25. Doctor Strange (1978) (5/10)
26. Nick Fury: Agent Of SHIELD (1998) (4/10)
27. The Fantastic Four (1994) (4/10)
28. Punisher: War Zone (2008) (4/10)
29. Hulk (2003) (4/10)
30. Red Sonja (1985) (4/10)
31. Captain America 2: Death Too Soon (1979) (4/10)
32. Spiderman (1977) (4/10)
33. Ghost Rider (2007) (3/10)
34. Bride of the Incredible Hulk (1978) (3/10)
35. The Death Of The Incredible Hulk (1990) (3/10)
36. Man-Thing (2005) (3/10)
37. Return of the Incredible Hulk (1978) (3/10)
38. Spiderman: The Dragon's Challenge (1979) (3/10)
39. Howard The Duck (1986) (2/10)
40. Captain America (1990) (2/10)
41. Captain America (1979) (2/10)
42. Generation X (1996) (2/10)
43. Spiderman Strikes Back (1978) (2/10)
44. Daredevil (2003) (2/10)
No comments:
Post a Comment