February 11, 2009

Review: Punisher: Warzone


If you are looking for lots of gore and violence, this is the movie to see. "Punisher: War Zone" has lots of over-the-top action which sometimes make it unintentionally funny.

This movie is sort of a sequel to the 2004 movie which starred Thomas Jane as the The Punisher. In the 2004 movie, Frank Castle's entire family was murdered and goes on to take revenge on the mob family who did it. In this movie, Ray Stevenson takes over the lead. And he's still being as vengeful as ever.

In the opening sequence, Punisher infiltrates a local mob dinner, and during the course of the massacre, he hideously disfigures gangster Billy Russoti. Rusotti re-surface as Jigsaw seeking revenge on Castle.

The story wasn't bad at all. But I felt that the Punisher was being portrayed too much as a mindless, violent, un-emotional killing machine. At least in the 2004 movie, the background of the character was shown to us and we sympathize with him. And give me a break with the Jigsaw character. Was he trying too hard to be like The Joker?

Overall this is just a cheesy B-movie action flick. I give it 5 out of 10 stars.

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