Fancast: The Big Picture

Punisher: War Zone - 12/5
Okay, so it's been pushed back from a summer release to December, likely to avoid the glut of the season, and okay, so there hasn't been any footage released yet. The Punisher is waiting in the wings, and he has to be mentioned, because it's never safe to ignore Frank Castle. He makes you pay for it.

Rome's Ray Stevenson is taking over for the first film's Thomas Jane, and no, I'm not counting Dolph Lundgren's 1989 effort. If you don't wear the skull, you're not the Punisher. End of story.

The Punisher is a classic revenge fantasy - an ex-military man whose family has been killed by violent crime declares a personal war on criminals everywhere, and the fantasy really come into play when considering that his judgment on who lives and who dies is generally reasonable. It should be relatively easy to translate this into a solid feature film franchise, but it hasn't quite caught the right notes yet. Punisher: War Zone, however, promises to change that with a devotion to the hardened, brutal Frank Castle in the brilliant Garth Ennis Marvel MAX series, which will give it the hard R rating that Punisher fans feel is a necessity. Castle, after all, is not all that different from a slasher movie monster, where half the draw is seeing all the interesting and creative ways he devises to kill people; the difference being that everyone he kills is someone who really deserves it, rather than just two poor kids getting naked in a tent somewhere in the woods. In this particular outing, he's going after a nasty mobster named Jigsaw (Dominic West), who is automatically a better nemesis than John Travolta.

Director Lexi Alexander is perhaps a surprising choice for a director, since The Punisher is generally considered to be a massive testosterone fest, but she does seem to have the proper sick and twisted attitude. Her comments on the pushing back of the release date from August to December: "I myself would have thought that people will think twice about going to see an extremely violent movie the closer it gets to Jesus’ B-day, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or whatever other holy holiday you’re celebrating. Well, the box office records prove different and instead, all you sick fucks get more blood thirsty that time of year. (And I say that with loving affection, cause I’m relying on all the sick fucks to show up)."

Watch the trailer for Lexi Alexander's film Green Street Hooligans, starring Elijah Wood.
Watch Ray Stevenson in a clip from HBO's Rome.
Watch Dominic West in the trailer for The Forgotten.
Watch Thomas Jane in 2004's version of The Punisher.