Punisher: WarZone
THIS is the Punisher I wanted Thomas Jane to be. Thanks to Lexi Alexander and Ray Stephenson for giving me a Frank Castle who didn't go around making mobsters think their wives were cheating and henchmen had betrayed them. This is the Frank that walks into a room and fires shotguns pointblank into the faces of the bad guys. This Frank does not fuck around trying to get the bad guys to kill their loved ones and advisers. Guns don't kill people. Frank does.
It's far from a perfect movie and it's starkly apparent just how much the Punisher and his world was/is influenced by that of Batman (especially in light of The Dark Knight, a vastly superior film) but it is very fun and very violent, somewhat cartoonish (which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't ). There are some genuinely good moments with real heart (Frank in the cemetery) and some almost good moments that get lost in translation (Frank in the church). The gore, largely cgi enhanced, is somewhat distracting (as much as it was in the latest Rambo movie). But I'm just glad someone got the Punisher, as a character, right. Stephenson is great as Frank and is a living embodiment of the Tim Bradstreet vision of the character. I'm going to have to go back and re-read all the Garth Ennis books from the beginning, now.
It's far from a perfect movie and it's starkly apparent just how much the Punisher and his world was/is influenced by that of Batman (especially in light of The Dark Knight, a vastly superior film) but it is very fun and very violent, somewhat cartoonish (which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't ). There are some genuinely good moments with real heart (Frank in the cemetery) and some almost good moments that get lost in translation (Frank in the church). The gore, largely cgi enhanced, is somewhat distracting (as much as it was in the latest Rambo movie). But I'm just glad someone got the Punisher, as a character, right. Stephenson is great as Frank and is a living embodiment of the Tim Bradstreet vision of the character. I'm going to have to go back and re-read all the Garth Ennis books from the beginning, now.