Second reboot for this troubled franchise and this time they finally get the casting right. Ray Stevenson is brought in as the main man, and in my opinion he looks spot on for the role, kudos to the casting team. No makeup applied facial hair this time.
As for the film well, it's a bit weak in plot really. Very straight forward, very basic, how can I put this...it's like Tim Burton's Batman except, replace the Joker with Jigsaw and add extreme violence. Sooo bottom line I fudging like it baby! The origins are skipped for this entry which is good. We get flashbacks but that is acceptable, we don't need all the family massacre stuff again.
The film gets right into the action with easily the best sequence of the film. A mansion full of mob bosses and henchmen cannon fodder, ripe for the Punisher to exterminate. This one sequence is a pure joy to watch for action aficionados. The lights go out and our antihero appears from nowhere. He then proceeds to gun down everyone in sight with a few neck snaps and knife kills thrown in.
From there it's into the more traditional (unoriginal), yet still workable plot-line, of the big mob boss supposedly getting killed off by our antihero. But surprise surprise! The villain re-emerges from the shadows, horribly disfigured, and out for revenge. So it's pretty much the plot for the Joker, you could say the same thing for almost all the Batman villains really.
First impressions for the Punisher are good. His outfit has been changed and upgraded with some serious heavy military police style body armour including, a thick collar section, an arsenal of top-line weaponry, and his skull logo remains intact, emblazoned upon his chest piece. He looks like he's just stepped out of a S.W.A.T. armoury, and it's the perfect look in my view. It's up to date and would definitely be a more realistic take on what someone would wear in a real situation. The black leather biker look is gone, that's the more fantasy based look.
Twas amusing when Castle blasts a bad guys face off with a big shotgun whilst at the same time holding this little girl. If that doesn't mess her up later on in life nothing will.
The main villain Jigsaw is a highly enjoyable lunatic played by Yorkshire-born Sheffield lad Dominic West. I was very impressed with his ''Noo Yawk'' dialect (hard thing to achieve), and with the sadistic humour he gave to his character. I'm trying not to mention a certain Batman villain here, but one does tend to think of him whilst watching this film. I mean let's be frank here (no pun intended), this could easily be a Batman flick. West's performance is incredibly similar to Nicholson's performance as Joker in Batman 89, there I said it. We all knew this deep down. Definitely a fun watch, but maybe a bit too close for comfort?
The film can't quite keep up the pace for the full run time I gotta admit, the finale is a bit anti-climactic. The whole idea is very cliched really. Jigsaw goes off to recruit lots of thugs from various quarters (Chinese, Irish, blinged-up Black gangsters), they all hole up in Jigsaw's hideout and await Castle. It all feels a bit 'Batman Forever-ish' with all these different gangs, half expected the interior of Jigsaw's lair to light up in neon when the battle started.
So yes the whole idea for this film is pretty dated, its very cliche, very 80's, but I don't think that's a bad thing. I still can't quite understand why this flopped as its a fast paced, nasty gunfest with Castle kicking ass, what more do people want? For me this is the best version of the Punisher so far, dark, gritty, seedy...with solid graphic novel/comic book visuals.
Did anyone else think West's performance as Jigsaw also kinda looked and sounded like an Al Pacino performance? Seriously was that just me?? The more I think about it, the more I think Pacino would have been great in this role, Castle vs Scarface. Anywho, yes this is a very unoriginal feature, yes it feels like an ultra-violent copy of a certain Tim Burton flick (I've mentioned this too many times now), and yes this is not an MCU flick. But this is definitely an underrated and forgotten Marvel flick which should be up there with 'Blade'.
7/10
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