Review of Punisher: War Zone (2008) by Dean N — 01 Jan 2011

From the pointless gory action scenes to the laughable acting, Punisher: Warzone is now one of my favorite guilty pleasures. Crap acting, crap story and even crap action scenes, it isn't a very good movie but eh... I'll watch it on tv if there's nothing on.

So Frank Castle, Punisher, yada yada, something about accidently killing a undercover cop and endangering the cops family by scarring the pretty boy criminal dood. Haunted by death of family, one last job, crazy war on Castle, gore, explosions, cheesy emotional scene, gore, explosions. That about sums it up.

The acting is pretty bad, Ray Stevenson(Punisher)doesn't do much than blank face and unconvincing emotional breakdown. Everyone else is meh as well, the villian dood, Dominic West(Jigsaw)is very cartoony and I oddly kind of enjoyed him that way. No one here will be winning Oscars soon or ever.

The story is nothing extraordinary, it is poorly written by a 13 year old. Whatever emotion they tried to shove in is not geniune. All emotional scenes are done with bad acting and cliche music, boo hoo. There's this scene where Castle confronts the wife of the cop he killed and she utters one of the funniest lines I've heard in a movie ever! "Who punishes you?" OMFG! LOFL! That's the highlight of the movie! Whatever they try to say with Castles morals is canceled out by uber gory violence. There's a scene where Punisher looks for his kidnapped homie and finds his bros disabled mom with her head blown off. WTF? WHAT THE FUCK!?! Ok with the criminals being blown away but come on, that's just in poor taste.

The action sequences feel half-assed with violent deaths like something out of a bad horror movie, including a guy being punched in the face and then his head explodes. I watched these scenes scratching my head with confusion. Along with these pointless scenes, we have weird scenes where the Loonie Bin Jim freak is jumping around and breaking mirrors and a gang doing acrobatics. All to the sound of heavy metal and club music and a Rise Against song. Again written, produced, directed and released by 13 year olds.

This flick is just terrible, it's not the worst thing ever but it's pretty bad. I'll watch it on tv if there's nothing on but I won't buy this on Blu-ray anytime... scratch that, never. 4 outta 10, it's gory, unfunny when it tries to be and funny when it doesn't. **.