Video: Punisher: War Zone

By Andy Hunsaker, Fancast Movies

So far, it’s been deceptively difficult to make a proper movie about The Punisher, Marvel Comics’ gritty street vigilante who has sworn to eliminate crime in violent and murderous ways after losing his family to it. Dolph Lundgren made the first attempt, but they didn’t even bother to use the iconic skull shirt, which is absolutely mandatory. This isn’t a difficult comic-book character to portray - no clunky armor, no spandex. Just a guy in a skull shirt kicking ass and killing bad guys with a dark intensity. Thomas Jane’s recent effort wasted too much time on expanding his origin to include slaughtering his entire extended family at a reunion, as well as John Travolta. By the end of Jane’s Punisher, you’re left with the feeling that the sequel to that movie would be the Punisher movie people actually want. Jane, however, didn’t get to make that sequel.

Hopefully, though, Ray Stevenson of Rome fame can succeed, with director Lexi Alexander at the helm and adapting a story directly out of the best run of Punisher books in recent memory - the Garth Ennis MAX series (MAX is Marvel’s ‘adults only’ line). The new trailer gives us our first look at the disfigured villain of the piece, a nasty piece of work named Jigsaw (who predated Tobin Bell in the Saw movies, by the way). This Jigsaw is played by Dominic West, and anyone cool enough to spend most of a movie unrecognizable behind make-up is already a leg up on Travolta. Check out the new trailer and see if you think they may have finally hit the nail on the head.

Watch the new trailer for Punisher: War Zone right here on Fancast.
Watch the first trailer for Punisher: War Zone.