The Parker Project

Posts Tagged ‘action’

I’m probably the only person who will say that “The Punisher: War Zone reminded me of Coleson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist.”

But it did.

The reason is that both of them made me think that if I had been 12 years old when I discovered them I would have enjoyed them much more.

Punisher: War Zone deserves some credit for being faithful to the comics. It manages to do so on the surface at least. It has plenty of gore, and the characters’ stories aren’t terribly bastardized. But maybe it’s most faithful to the mediocre issues. There was something of the charm and subtelty of the better comics that was missing.

If I were 12 I would have been entertained by all the makeup effects to show horrific deaths. None of them have the impact of more subtle screen deaths, or even nearly as splashy ones in Robocop. That’s because each one is shown and then forgotten about. There isn’t any real anticipation or consequence.

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A kinder gentler 24.

At least that’s what it feels like. This episode features no torture at all. Sure, a guy gets bludgeoned to death and tossed off a balcony. But for an entire 60 minutes to pass in the life of Jack Bauer without him toruring someone or one of his friends getting tortured, this is really stunning.

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After two multi-episode story arcs we are dealing with consequences now.

Sarah is trying to get John away from Cameron and/or Derek. Everyone seems to know some fragment of everyone else’s secrets. And there is plenty withheld and building mistrust.

For the most part this feels like a bridge episode between two larger story arcs. But there are still a few important things that happen.

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