8 Great Movies Everyone Expected To Suck
3. Punisher: War Zone
War Zone was the third attempt at turning The Punisher into a franchise, following the Dolph Lundgren and Tom Jane movies. It looked like third time wouldn’t be the charm, since it suffered bad word of mouth almost immediately.
The first photo of actor Ray Stevenson in the role was met with derision, and an early trailer did a poor job of selling it, with the excessive neon making it look like a Joel Schumacher movie. Then came the rumours director Lexi Alexander had been fired, and the studio wanted to trim out the violence and make it PG-13.
It turns out Lexi wasn’t fired, but she had major battles with the studio over the movie's tone. She wanted to make it camp and fun, while they wanted something closer to The Dark Knight. The movie wasn’t a huge hit but Punisher fans lapped it up, and it’s since become a beloved cult classic.
After all, it’s hard not to love a movie where The Punisher blows up a free runner with a rocket launcher, or Dominic West hams up a storm as Jigsaw.