Punisher: Warzone (2008)
Okay, so it's not a masterpiece. But it didn't deserve the box office disappointment that crushed any hopes of a franchise. It's too bad, though, because the filmmakers got so much of Frank Castle's world right, that I would have loved to see this version continue. Warzone is a much stronger Punisher movie than either of its two predecessors, and filmmakers finally cast a leading man who wasn't blond and actually looked the part. Apologies to both Dolph Lungren and Thomas Jane, but your Punisher movies were much worse than this. At least Warzone had balls. And what pissed me off the most is that Max Payne (2008), a similarly-themed vigilante flick, made a shitload of money, and it was brutally awful. I turned it off. It was even more unwatchable due to it being a neutered PG-13 version of a videogame that received a hard mature rating. I mean, if you are going to make a redundant Death Wish knockoff, you could at least make it violent; then, maybe, there would be some reason for me to watch it.
Let's start with what worked. Two things: Ray Stevenson and the violence. Did I mention Ray Stevenson? The man was born for this role, he looks like he was torn right from Tim Bradstreet's cover pages for Garth Ennis' most recent run on Frank Castle. And, much like the Thomas Jane Punisher (2004) movie, the best parts of Warzone are the ones that adhere the closest to the books.
The violence is just right. It is totally excessive, but that is exactly what The Punisher is all about. There is also some really great acting. Doug Hutchison steals the show here, as he does in Lost or anything else he appears in, as Loony Bin Jim. Every moment of Jim's screentime is thouroughly entertaining, and Hutchison clearly knows what kind of film he is in. Dominic West, as Jigsaw, also has a good time. It's very funny watching an Englishman play an American with a thick New Jersey accent. He hams it up to the extreme and is a pleasure to watch. Julie Benz, who I enjoy in my favorite television series, Dexter, is not given much to do here, but she does her thing well.
The bottom line is that nobody writes The Punisher like Garth Ennis. His 8 year run on the character is the most successful and endearing run in the history of Frank Castle. For the first few years, Ennis wrote the books in the style of black comedy, with cartoony but graphic violence, and still within the constraints of the Marvel Universe. The character really became interesting, however, when Ennis moved his books onto Marvel's Max line: a series geared solely toward adults. In this format, profanity is no longer censored, the violence is more realistic and more extreme, and the themes are much darker and much heavier. Some stories grossed even me out. Ennis had a great real-world vigilante in his hands here, who traveled outside the Marvel Universe, to Russia and Afghanistan, and dealt with global politics and wars. The humor is not entirely absent from the Max series, but there is a singular focus on exploring the darker side of Frank's world.
Punisher: Warzone's biggest failure is that it tries to meld these two versions of Frank together, and it doesn't quite work. The sets look fantastic, following the comic book-style of using 3 main colors to light each scene. Sure it feels a little too close to Batman and Robin (1997) at times, but the darker tones and constant violence frequently assures us that this is not a Schumacher film. The dialogue hovers somewhere between serviceable, camp, and just plain awful. The acting is weak in parts only because some characters are grossly underdeveloped. I liked Dash Mihok, who played Martin Soap, but his character was underused. Soap is even more hilariously pathetic in the comic, and I would have preferred to see him team up with the lesbian detective from Welcome Back Frank, the 12-issue series that instigated Garth Ennis' Punisher run. That would have provided a much more interesting dynamic than the cinematic partnering of Soap with FBI agent Paul Budiansky.
There is no real story to Punisher: Warzone, which is a huge disappointment given the wealth of material available for adaptation. Any of Ennis's story-arcs would have sufficed, and delivered a much stronger product than what we are left with. Ray Stevenson said they were looking at a couple of Ennis's stories for the sequel, but it looks like the sequel will probably never happen. Oh well, what's another decade? My sincerest hope is that when they try again ten years from now, they use Ray Stevenson again. Sure he'll be in his fifties, but that is okay. Ennis' Punisher is at least in his fifties, and is even more of a badass for it.
The final verdict: filmmakers should have had Garth Ennis write the script. Comic book writers, after all, write a script for their comic in much the same way that screenwriters do for a film. Filmmakers could have at least had Ennis look over the screenplay and tweak the dialogue, as it is obvious the screenwriters didn't know what they were doing: Frank didn't utter a word until the 28 minute mark. But perhaps this is for the best. Punisher: Warzone is strongest when the talking ends and the action begins. Screw Max Payne, see Punisher: Warzone instead. It has balls.
Professor Puff
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