Showing posts with label Guilty Pleasures. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Guilty Pleasures. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Crime (Fighters) & Punisher

2008 looks to be a bumper year for comic book geeks; we've got Iron Man, Speedracer, Hellboy II, another Hulk film, Batman: The Dark Knight, and the long-awaited Watchmen film all set to drop in '08.

Not bad, but the one film that has piqued my interest more than all of those combined is the Punisher: War Zone movie. No, really.Growing up as a kid in the 80s, there was no cooler superhero than the Punisher. He didn't have superpowers, he wasn't some rich weirdo that hung out with little boys, he didn't bother with an alter-ego, and he actually KILLED people... lots of people.
The Punisher was the only comic book I regularly followed in the 1980s. Later on, I got into the Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, and Frank Miller stuff, but as a kid, Punisher was #1.

For those who don't know, here's the story of the Punisher in a nutshell:
Frank was a Vietnam war-hero. Frank witnessed his family being murdered by the Mafia. Frank went ape-shit crazy, dressed up in body armor, called himself "the Punisher", started killing criminals, took their money to buy guns and explosives, turned around and killed more criminals (repeat).
End of story. He was the perfect Regan-era underwear-pervert.

What kills me is that what should be the easiest comic book to turn into a movie has yielded two ripe turds of films. I mean how fucking hard is it? War-vet goes crazy and starts killing criminals - This ain't fucking rocket-surgery, people! Just watch 'Taxi Driver' three times and put a skull-suit on Travis Bickle. Done.
Well, I'm hoping like hell that they get it right this time. They have Titus Pullo playing the Punisher and it's being directed by the woman who did Green Street Hooligans. I'm cautiously optimistic.

Regardless, I'm sure that it'll be a hell of a lot less disappointing than the Watchmen flick - Bastards.