Monday, June 22, 2009

Punisher starts with PU

Your Los Angeles Library tax dollars at work.

Punisher: War Zone (2008)

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
(reload)
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
(reload)
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
(reload)

That about sums up Punisher: War Zone. Oh, one more thing, after each BLAM! there's usually some body part shown blowing open/apart. (I lost count of how many exploding heads there are in this movie.) There must have been a blood, latex and squib shortage in Hollywood after this movie wrapped production.

Ray Stevenson of HBO's Rome series, plays that barrel of laughs Frank Castle, whose wife and kids were accidentally killed by the mob. Castle paints a skull on his body armor and proceeds to wipe out organized crime in New York, this time tangling with a goofy Brooklyn goombah who goes by the name Jigsaw after Frank tosses him in a glass crushing machine and he comes out disfigured. Jiggy, played by Dominic West, was like a cross between The Mask and Tommy Lee Jones' version of Two Face from Batman Forever. In other words, with all the movie's vicious carnage his silly voice and manner was very much out of place.

I don't mind a "good kill" in a movie. When a slimy bad guy or henchperson buys it, usually in a creative way, it's a release. Their head doesn't need to go all splat like "Scanners" on you either. In the terrific tense thriller Breakdown, when Kurt Russell kicks the bad guy who kidnapped his wife in the face I literally leaped off the sofa and yelled, "YEAH!"

The thing with P:WZ is that not only is it brutal, ugly and sadistic, it revels in being so. It makes me long for the good old days of gentle revenge fare, like the original Death Wish and the Rambo series. (In last year's Rambo film, the title character machine guns half of Myanmar (formerly Burma) and it wasn't as cruel as this movie.)

Punisher: War Zone is for kids who like to torture puppies. Stay far away from it.

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