Trailer Tuesday - Punisher: War Zone

First things first, don't be misled that this new Punisher movie, Punisher: War Zone is a straight "reboot" of the film franchise based on the Marvel Comics character. Rather, much like the new Hulk movie, it's actually more of a continuation of the story, just with new actors in the roles.

This time around, Rome's Ray Stevenson is replacing Thomas Jane as merciless badass Frank Castle.

Lexi Alexander, a world kickboxing and karate champion, who was responsible for the very violent Green Street Hooligans, is in the director's chair.

In fact, Alexander has promised a Punisher film more in line with the comics than Thomas Jane's rather sanitised 2004 flick. In other words, plenty of blood will flow as Castle takes on ruthless mob boss Billy Russoti/Jigsaw and tries to avoid the police's "Punisher Task Force", which has been sent to end his vigilante ways. Here's what Alexander had to stay on her blog:

I'm not sure what kind of impression I would get from this trailer if I didn't actually know the film. I am utterly impressed, though, they managed to find that much PG rated action footage at all. It had to be a challenge to cut a trailer from our action stuff without showing any gore and blood.

I've been told that you can't even show heads blowing up in red-band trailers. I hope that's not true because that would suck. It's weird to see Castle shoot all those bullets and not see the thugs who are catching them. That's the best f**king part about it!!!


Apart from the cheesy slow motion chandelier sequence in the trailer, I'm actually pretty keen for this Punisher film - particularly if it's actually going to be pushing limits this time. Unlike a lot of people I actually didn't have a problem with 2004's Punisher (for the record I'm not the world's biggest Punisher fan, having never read the comic). That Punisher was pretty average but I've seen plenty of worse comic book adaptations.

What is really selling this new film to me so far is Stevenson in the title role. Physically he Is Frank Castle. He looks like we walked straight out of the comic book pages. And I'm optimistic that he has the acting chops to play the grim avenger convincingly as well.

The Punisher: War Zone opens in the United States on 5 December 2008. I'm sure South Africans can expect it on the big screen around the same time as well.