Skip to main content
The Year of Our Lord 2008 was a banner year for comic-book movies, and not just because Bruce Banner returned to the screen in The Incredible Hulk.
It was the year Guillermo del Toro combined superheroes and high fantasy in Hellboy II. It was the summer when Marvel changed the shape of franchise filmmaking by setting Iron Man up as the linchpin of its shared universe, and the year The Dark Knight elevated the form to something even pasty-ass Oscar voters could get behind.
One thing that didn't change? Well, turns out it's fucking impossible to make a decent film about the Punisher. Considering Punisher: War Zone is the best of the three big-screen appearances by Frank Castle speaks volumes about the character's weirdly tough time finding success.
Why is this so hard? It can't be the fact that the character of Frank Castle is that complicated. He's a war hero. His family got killed. So he kills people. All of the people. His superpower? He's good at murder. When he's not murdering people, he basically sits in his hideout sharpening knives and making ammo while thinking about who he's going to murder next. He's basically Batman. Except he's totally down with killing people (so, basically, he's pre-Zack Snyder Batman).
You'd think that Punisher would be the easiest of all characters to adapt, mainly because all you'd have to do is remake an '80s action movie and change the hero to a dude with a skull on his shirt. Commando? Great Punisher movie! The Punisher from the actual '80s, starring Dolph Lundgren in Hot Topic hair dye? Not so much.
War Zone, though, should at least get some credit. It's a film coated in brain matter and bone fragments that seems plucked straight out of a VHS bargain bin, a flick that opens with Ray Stevenson decapitating an elderly mob boss right after he talks about his colostomy bag, then breaks the neck of the dude's elderly wife for good measure. That kind of shit goes on for nearly two hours.
It's a film defined by violence and camp, but the violence is too cheap and sadistic and redundant to be effective, and the camp is too over-the-top to match it. It's hard to have an ultra-violent piece of exploitation action—complete with a pair of villains that consist of a cannibal and a Two-Face knockoff whose origin story is "I fell in a vat of broken glass"—and then drench it in enough monochromatic neon light to make Dario Argento and Joel Schumacher splooge.
It's basically Batman Forever, but somehow cornier. And a lot bloodier.
In our modern cinematic landscape, the Punisher doesn't fit in well as a marquee player. His tale, simple though it is, is a little too sadistic and basic to be totally fun, even in a post-Deadpool world. The specter of Virginia Tech reportedly hung over director Lexi Alexander during production, which explains her choice to go camp to water it all down. Make it too grounded in reality and you've got a horribly over-the-top exercise in trash. Make it too campy and you've got, well, this.
Basically, the only way a character like the Punisher could really work is to dump him into a war zone devoid of plot. That worked for Judge Dredd. It could work for Frank.
War Zone is an important film, sure, and one that's just goofy enough to merit another viewing. But it's more interesting to look at compared to the other films that came out at the same time, if only for a grim look at what comic-book movies could have become if it had hit its target.
SEE IT: Punisher: War Zone screens at 5th Avenue Cinema. 4 and 10 pm Friday-Saturday, 2 pm Sunday, April 22-24.
Also showing:
It's probably inadvertent that Church of Film has the only extremely trippy movie screening for 4/20, but hey, look! It's the 1976 Czech take on The Little Mermaid. The Fish & Chips shop is right down the street from North Star. Just sayin'. North Star Ballroom. 8 pm Wednesday, April 20.
Joy Cinema's free Weird Wednesday gets Wood with Plan 9 From Outer Space. Joy Cinema. 9:15 pm Wednesday, April 20.
KBOO's Reel Jazz series turns focus to the '60s avant jazz scene with Imagine the Sound, focusing on a time when musicians like Archie Shepp, Bill Dixon and others managed to once again freak out old people in a way jazz hadn't since its heyday. Clinton Street Theater. 7 pm Wednesday, April 20.
Mississippi Records pays tribute to the late Andy Kaufman with a program of the comedian's TV appearances and his favorite old-school cartoons. Hollywood Theatre. 7:30 pm Thursday, April 21.
One of the most jaw-dropping and influential documentaries ever made, Frederick Wiseman's Titicut Follies completely changed American perception of the mental health system by exposing the degradation exacted on patients of Massachusetts' Bridgewater State Hospital. NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium. 6 pm Thursday, April 21.
The NW Film Center's retrospective of Japanese trash auteur Seijun Suzuki continues to be the best thing on Portland screens, this week featuring 1965 yakuza flick Tattooed Life (Friday), 1964's pioneering "trash opera" Gate of Flesh (Saturday) and more. NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium. See NWFilm.org for full listings.
Ever since the Thin White Duke went to the big fashion show in the sky, nary a week has gone by without a tribute screening. This is a great thing. Especially since it means yet another chance to see The Man Who Fell to Earth on the big screen. Mission Theater. Opens Friday, April 22.
The Shakespeare in the Afternoon series continues with Richard Eyre's 1998 production of King Lear, with Ian Holm in the title role. Clinton Street Theater. 2 pm Saturday, April 23.
We're not going to ask why there exists a 70mm print of Tobe Hooper's amazingly overlooked sci-fi zombie/vampire/alien/bugfuck epic Lifeforce. We're just thankful that it exists, and that the Hollywood has it in all its glory. Hollywood Theatre. 9:45 pm Saturday, April 23.
This Is Spinal Tap returns to theaters to show us all how a fake music documentary is done. Mission Theater: With the biggest bottoms available. Opens Friday, April 22.
Coraline might not have been the surefire timeless classic that LAIKA had hoped for, but dammit it's a treasure for those of us who love our animation a little creepy, and little lucid and a lot different. Academy Theater. Friday-Thursday, April 22-28.
Total Recall, in which a man ponders the age old question: If man is not himself, den who de hell is is? Laurelhurst Theater. Academy Theater. Friday-Thursday, April 22-28.
Documentarian Leo Hurwitz's 1948 groundbreaker Strange Victory turned heads when it juxtaposed post-Nazi-rule Europe with America in the run-up Civil Rights Movement. NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditoriun 5 pm Saturday, 7 pm Sunday, April 23-24.
Xanadu hits the Mission for the latest round of sing-along screenings, this time with the musical stylings of Electric Light Orchestra, accompanied by the wails of the ghost of Gene Kelly begging you to watch Singin' in the Rain instead. Mission Theater. 7:15 pm Monday, April 25 (sing-a-long). 5:45 pm Tuesday & 8:30 pm Wednesday, April 26-27. (regular old version).
The 1984 documentary Los Sures examines life in the Brooklyn neighborhood in Williamsburg, back when it was one of the poorest neighborhoods in America and populated with Puerto Rican and Dominican families rather than white hipsters selling hugs on subway platforms. NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium. 7 Sascha Baron Coen pm Monday, April 25.
Suck it, Austin Powers and The Brothers Grimsby. Hitchcock was spoofing espionage movies since before Bond even hit the big screen. The problem is, North by Northwest is so good, nobody realized it was kind of a joke. Hollywood Theatre. 7 pm Monday, April 25.
Director Brian Trenchard-Smith hits the Hollywood for a screening of 1980's Stunt Rock, the story of an Austrialian man who works as a stunt man by day, a rock and roll pyrotechnic master by night, and a lover whenever the situation allows. Hollywood Theatre. 7:30 pm Tuesday, April 26.
Willamette Week