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Someone Else Holding the Baby Blues
11/01/12
Back to the Future Too
30/12/11
Untold Cooper
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A British Defence Against America
08/12/11
Not So Marvellous
07/12/11 Average Rating: 3 out of 5
We need to talk about Gervais
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A Quarter Life Crisis
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Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
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An open letter to George Lucas.
01/09/11
Burn Hollywood Burn
19/07/11
The Apprenticed
18/07/11
In Praise of ITV
03/07/11
Sick
28/06/11
Know the Drill
03/06/11
Modern Cinemas are Rubbish
02/06/11 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
My Tooth Story
26/05/11
Game of PWNS
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West is West
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Crime Crime Crime
17/05/11
The Bored Room
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The Future Shock
09/05/11
The Worm That Eats Itself
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The Life Atwatic
24/04/11
Driving Like A Dick
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A Penny For My Thoughts
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The Needle and the Damage Done
23/03/11 Average Rating: 5 out of 5
The Meaning of Life Part 1 : Birth
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10 O Clock Dive
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Falling off of the Witches Hat
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Small Talk
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The Waiting Game
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2011
05/01/11
2010
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Police Stop
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Z Cast
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The Crazy Adventures of Bastian and Atreyu
09/12/10
A note to my son or daughter.
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Baby I can drive your car
22/10/10 Average Rating: 4.3 out of 5
A Good Society
10/09/10
The National Sport of Rubbernecking
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Scanners 2
08/09/10
What mean Expendable?
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Adventures in Babyhaving
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Warning : Speculation
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A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...
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Pipe Up
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More Bard News
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29/03/10
The Apple
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1987
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The Long Bad Wednesday
25/03/10
Art for Art's Sake
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Modern Slash
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A Little Bit 'Special'
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Dead Happy
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Video Killed The Radio Stars
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Sunday Zoo
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25/01/10
I Want To Lie Down With A Lion
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A National Treasure
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Snow
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Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em
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BBC Bashing
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No More Heroes
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What I Did In My Holidays
04/11/09
Jellyneck
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Can Buy Me Love
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Memory Lane
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Shitting Stars
26/08/09
The Life and Death of My Pop Star Life
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Are You Being Offended?
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My Generation
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Yes, but how did it Happen??
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He Must Have Some Agent
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Who Punishes The Punisher?
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It's The End Of The World As I Know It
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Picture This
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I Am Modern Man
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08/03/09
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You Be The Judge
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Don't Remake Me Over
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The Future Is Already Written
07/01/09
The Shortest Story Ever Told
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Demon Seed
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He's Not The Messiah!
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Who throws a shoe?
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07/12/08
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Alan Partridge and Other Less Successful Characters
23/11/08
National Expression
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11/11/08
A Common Practice In Poland
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Close Encounters of the West Country Kind
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David Brent Would Vote For Barack Obama
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I am Legend
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Setting The President In The Art World
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My Word Is My Bond
02/11/08
Who Punishes The Punisher?
No one.
17/07/09
I can imagine the scene now. Studio executives, sat in a dark and smoke filled board room, pouring over the box office takings for the 2004 Punisher film. "What we need is a sequel." One splutters through his cigar. "No" Says another, "We need a re-boot." "But we just basically did one" Says Jimmy Exec, junior executive, "We rebooted that unintentionally hilarious Dolph Lundgren one with this quite tepid one with John Travolta stinking up the screen every time he is on with his bad hair, bad acting and awful giant face!?" The room falls silent. It is too late, the die has been cast and a re-boot, it is.

So, I watched "Punisher: War Zone" at the weekend. If you havent seen it, the story is this. The Punisher kills some mobsters, one of whom is an undercover FBI agent. This causes the Punisher to be depressed and see the family his actions has left without a dad. He mopes around a bit and then kills more people. Meanwhile, Dominic West (McNulty from The Wire) plays a gangster who seems to be doing a bet for comic relief or something to see how long he can last talking like a man in New York who says "Cwoffee" or "I'm Walkin' here!" He in turn, is Punished and thrown into a glass smashing machine by The Punisher. He doesn't die, but is heavily disfigured. We then get a scene that is very reminiscent to Batman, with the mirror and the reaction to his newly rescued by plastic surgeon face. While I am talking about accents, there are also a gang of Irish free runners who run around scaling walls and leaping buildings. Sadly, their leader has the most unconvincing Irish accent I have ever heard. He should stick to running.

Anyway, I wont go through the whole plot, but what I will say is that it is crap, but with flashes of good action. The opening flare at the dinner table scene is good fun, but the rest of the film seems quite pedestrian.

It falls right in the middle of the Punisher films. It isnt as bad as the 1989 Punisher with Dolph, but it isnt as good as the 2004 one with the vastly superior Thomas Jane.

Ray Stevenson plays the Punisher in this one and just doesn't do it for me. He doesn't say a word until at least 30 minutes into the film and just looks unimpressive. He doesn't have the physical presence of Thomas Jane or Dolph, he does OK, but his part is just so underwritten, which is a surprise what with him being the Punisher and that's what the film's called, but he barely speaks in the 90 minutes and when he does you cant really hear what he is saying. It just isnt a very well written part.

Jigsaw on the other hand (Dominic West) seems to have been given all of the time they should have spent on The Punisher. He is given all the camp and screen time that Nicholson did in Batman, but he just doesn't use it to the same degree, he actually becomes quite annoying, so I suppose you could say he is just like Nicholson.

This filmmakers also uses that boring technique of lighting each scene with unique colours, so for instance, one room with have all greens in it, one will have reds and so on. This gets quite annoying after a while and has kind of been done to death.

The one thing it does really well, is the vast degree of excessive violence. In one scene someone is punched in the face so hard by the Punisher that his fist goes through the other side. Someone else is decapitated, loads of people have their necks broken, one gets impaled on a spike and then has their neck snapped for good measure and one gets his face blown off by a shotgun.

So, in conclusion, if you are interested in The Punisher, I would recommend the 2004 Thomas Jane version, as he is the perfect choice to play this part, but make sure you fast forward the John Travolta scenes. If however, you adore excessive violence and not much else, Punisher : War Zone is for you. If you like seeing a nude Punisher talking to himself in a sewer, I suggest the 1989 Dolph Lungren version.




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Comments about This Article
The 1989 version it is then.
Comment By: Mathias Hues, 17 Jul 2009, Rating: 5/5
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