Eye Candy #161 - "Punisher War Zone"

Punisher War Zone: The third Punisher film, arguably the closest to the current source material (the MAX series specifically), as well as easily the most violent and gruesome. This time around, Frank Castle (Ray “Titus Pullo” Stevenson) is a former special forces soldier whose family is murdered by mobsters. He wages a one man war on crime, wiping out criminals all over the city. Billy Russoti (Dominic West) is a an up and coming soldier who finds himself at the top of the food chain once the Punisher wipes out his peers, but a run-in with Castle scars him horribly, and he reinvents himself as Jigsaw. And Jigsaw wants revenge on Castle and brings the various criminal gangs together (in a “Patton-esque” homage) to take him on. The violence here is explicit and bloody. Peoples’ heads are blown off left and right, you’d think you were watching “Scanners”. Decapitations, broken necks, fists through the face, bad things done to old ladies, scissors in the forehead, a ride in a glass crusher, grenades, bullets galore, this is not for the squeamish. This is the second feature for director Lexi Alexander, and while she hasn’t made a very good film here, she has made a watchable film with a dark sense of humor, and it’s certainly better than the last travesty to be called “The Punisher”. Has a better cast than I expected: Stevenson is good, West is obviously having fun hamming it up, but we also get Collin Salmon and Wayne Knight. And Julie Benz apparently hasn‘t met a Lionsgate movie she wouldn‘t star in. Woodchuck sez, “Worth a look.”