Ray Stevenson - PUNISHER: WAR ZONE

I'd been craving a Ray Stevenson fix, so I was happy as a little girl when the PUNISHER War Zone DVD arrived yesterday! It'll be a reasonably joyous weekend for me once I get to cozy up on the couch and veg out for a bit.

While far from being a "good" movie, I think P:WZ is one of the better comic book related films to come out in a while. No, I've personally never picked up the comics but all my fanboy friends would pretty much tell me it's dark and violent and he kicks ass. Well, this movie definitely delivers on those counts. Also, since it's not as iconic as Batman or Superman or Spiderman, it's hard to imagine this film would get the kind of backing it deserves, so the end product was pretty enjoyable to me.

I also watched the extras on the DVD which included scenes of Ray Stevenson training with members of the Marine Corp to make his gun handling authentic, and a "making of" clip that talked to the director and the d.p. who stated the Garth Ennis comic books were their source material and how they tried their best to stick closely to the comic books.

I loved that they hired a female director to helm such a "manly" action flick especially since she had no real prior experience, but Lexi Alexander's enthusiasm for the Punisher really comes through in the "making of" video.

A lot of aspects of this film are fairly cliched and rather over-the-top such as:

The really bad NY tough guy accent from JIGSAW, played by Dominic West.

The cliched and horrible accents of the Jamaican free runner and the bad boy Latino "gangster with a heart of gold."

However, Colin Salmon's Special Agent Budiansky was a solid performance, and Wayne Knight was great as Frank Castle's own version of Q.

What really makes P: WZ work so well is the great true to real life action sequences, the unapologetic violence, and letting the Punisher mete out some serious pain - heads are blown off or knifed, bodies are shred to bits with grenades, there are impalings and burnings and some serious damage with broken glass. In short - it was pretty cool.

On a slightly separate note, I wanted to extend much praise to Stevenson for his transformation into Frank Castle. The Training special feature on the DVD has the guys giving him lessons on how to handle the firearms and shoot like an expert. They praise Stevenson for his natural affinity for the weapons and shooting skills. (Gotta love a manly man!)

When we walked out of the theater the first time we saw this, my LP commented that P: WZ was like a true action flick from the Eighties - simple and direct with some crazy violence, guns, and action. I'm not a crazy person who embraces violence, but I appreciate a good bit of entertainment when it's well done. And I give Stevenson and crew major kudos for doing a solid job (something crap films like X-Men 3 could learn from).

I hope people will come to discover the fun of Punisher: War Zone now that it's released on DVD. It has the potential to be a kind of cult favorite, and I would like to be one of the first to push that idea hard on all comic fans and any lover of a good action flick. Get out there and DO IT.

p.s. Found this nice picture with an LATimes.com conversation with Ray Stevenson.

So hot and adorable - I'm a sucker for a badass with a tender heart.

Ray - xoxo