Review of Punisher: War Zone (2008) by Kris J — 02 May 2018

Despite a handful of interesting scenes or lines, this is hands-down the weakest mechanization of a Marvel character I have seen to date.

It is not the gore, nor the dark depiction of the Punisher, I actually think it should be that way, to keep up with the comic book look and feel. But the film is full of really (and I mean really) bad acting, and ridiculous characters. To save spoilers, I won't go too much into details, but it feels like if only couple of actors were professionals, and other 95% of the roles were cast from aspiring people who are just starting to master acting, some maybe only just recently subscribe for online acting academy course. And the (anti) Oscar, among other "stars" must go to a certain little girl in the movie.

Ray Stevenson just didn't work for me in this role either. I find his performance likable in the sad scenes, but not so much in the action scenes. It is not that I actually think he was terrible or even just bad. Rather, it did not agree on my perception of the Punisher role known from the comic books. I whole-heartedly think that the current Dolph Lundgren would be able to pull this role in an epic manner with a good director and co-cast. The old (aka young) Dolph Lundgren in the 1989's Punisher was not yet at that look and feel, but right now Dolph is half-way to Liam Nielson's fee, and could totally own the role, especially that just as the Punisher is said to be a brilliant strategist in the original story line, Dolph is a smart guy himself. End of digression.

Dominic West's main villain character looked absolutely cheap all the way, from the first to the very last second. I had to look him up, only to confirm that his Italian accent was absolutely fake and not well delivered. But the cast director is to blame for giving an Italian mob role to an Englishman. The accent, the body language, it was all painfully over-delivered, and was at times hard to watch.

Doug Hutchinson's role, I feel, almost could have been good. But the absolutely bad story, logic and directing didn't help, for sure. Although doesn't make sense, but I was glad that Jigsaw's blood brother didn't have the family's awful imitation of Italian accent and body language.

Colin Salmon actually delivered very decent performance, at least in contrast to others, especially second plan cast (which was like they hired volounters for the movie). He actually looked like knew what he was doing on the set: acting.

The character of Ink "played" by Keram Malicki-Sánchez, felt to me like Ink was an actual son of Pittsy's actor, who got job on the movie because his dad pulled some string, despite obvious lack of any acting skills. He felt so oddly placed on the set with others, like if he was not even aware that there was a studio movie happening around him, like if he thought he was just a substitute or a stuntman, to be later replaced in the post production.

The movie, right from the very first scene felt like a TV soap opera shot in wide screen as a disguise. Very bad lines (except couple ones), very poor acting (except some that was only just poor, and some that was actually okay), and very weird logic running through the film. If the movie was shot at 60fps, I would not even withstand past 1st scene of it, as it would look like a B-class movie in a widescreen aspect ratio, and above average color correction.

I was watching the movie constantly thinking to myself, that I should have gone with rewatching Howard The Duck instead, for at least getting that oldschool big Hollywood studio cinema magic, with perhaps a weird story, but at least some good actors in it.