Lethal Punisher: Kill or be killed

In between playing supporting roles in movies like THE GRANDMASTER, Cung Le found the time to build on his solo career in the direct-to-video realm. Disappointingly, his sophomore effort here leaves a good deal to be desired. While the previous DRAGON EYES filled his prospects as a karate star with promise, PUNCTURE is a less impressive action flick that's mainly weakened by the ravages of producers and certainly leaves Le looking less extraordinary. It's still a decent film that's strengthened by its fight content, but a bit too far from perfect to warrant a purchase for me.

The story: The family of a war veteran (Le) is murdered by a racist underground faction after he interferes with their business, prompting him to target the group and its leader (Dolph Lundgren) for retribution.

I don't blame the stars or even the director (Giorgio Serafini) for the movie's DTV-isms. The production company behind the film, Voltage Pictures, has a habit of editing its low budget movies in amateurish ways, so expect to see lots of gratuitous slow motion and sped-up segments, "artistic" lighting overexposures, unnecessary close-ups, and scene-hopping. These aspects are present just enough to properly irritate you but not ruin the movie, to the same degree that the screenplay bothers me. There's a good deal of unnecessary cruelty and exploitation of women that I don't appreciate. While that was bad enough, I find it just as hard to forgive how boring the script renders Dolph Lundgren. The Swedish Superman excels at playing villains, and though it seems like the part of the long-haired supremacist leader would let him show off some of his creepiness, he clearly doesn't have good character material to work with and ends up being pretty unmemorable.

Cung Le shows his rather meager dramatic limits, though he still makes a good tough guy. Another tough guy, Vinnie Jones, plays a character that weirdly has the bare minimum to do with the plot but manages through sheer charisma to still come off cool. But actions speak louder than words in these kinds of movies, and this is where PUNCTURE WOUNDS shows its best side. With only four fight scenes and one shootout, the movie could definitely use more action, though Cung Le's kicks are worth waiting for. The choreography manages to appear completely efficient without shirking flashiness, so it's very satisfying when Le takes on groups of bad guys. His finale with Lundgren is much shorter than it should be, but it allows Lundgren to look pretty fluid and powerful, using his height, reach, and power karate to take the fight to Le, cool but believably.

The fights too are hampered by the aforementioned editing, so despite being the movie's brightest spot, they can't elevate this review to a higher rating. Despite this one being a minor disappointment, I'm hopeful for Le's future, provided he choose a better studio for his next vehicle. Bottom line: if you're looking for an imperfect but moderately exciting karate-revenge movie, this one fits the bill well enough, but it's not nearly the best any of its performers have to offer.

The minute Lundgren saw the wig and facial hair his character would have, he should have known this was a film he should have steered clear from. It's not good, the script is bad, the acting is fairly poor, and the plot unoriginal.

It is coherent, so if you want an action film offering nothing more than a bit of violence, then this absolutely fits the bill. The final fight scene is actually pretty good too, so you have that choreography to look forward to, but the rest are a bit hit and miss.

It's really the dialogue that makes Puncture Wounds/A Certain Kind of Justice so poor though. Cringeworthy narration to bookend the film and the most ridiculously placed "It's okay, bro" within the script. So it's difficult to see if the acting is bad, or the material the cast had to work with just tripped them up. To be fair, Evigan (the only woman with lines) does okay, Vinnie Jones does his job (but very much typecast), and Lundgren passes, but really Le as the lead doesn't excel in anything but kicking.

Also shout out to the most shoe-horned scene possible, where a secondary character has to deal with an ill loved one whilst getting visited a rip-off Colonel Trautman.

I do not usually judge films as awful I am not a movie snob, but this film has nothing.

I struggled to watch an hour of this and had to turn it off as I really couldn't care less about what happened next or to who.

I love movies of all genres but this had no entertainment factor at all. I had no empathy with the main character John and sadly couldn't find any reason to keep watching.

Maybe something amazing happens in the latter part of the movie but for me this was just a bad action flick that showed us nothing we haven't seen a hundred times before done a hundred times better elsewhere.

Save yourself from this boredom and pick another one to watch.

Wow. I would like to have been a fly on the wall when this piece of utter detritus was first pitched. I have not seen a movie so ridiculous, so badly written, so comically badly acted, so full of terrible clichés in decades, if ever.

Cung Le is devoid of any acting talent and would be well advised to not quit his day job, whatever that may be. Dolph Lundgren is obviously "past it" and looks like a total alcoholic has-been in this horrible production.

Blood flows freely, people die like flies, but acting and any genuine character development are absent and might not even have been able to rescue this turkey. I started laughing out loud at one point when even the fight scenes were so preposterous that even a four year old would not have believed them.

Save your money. Don't even wait for it to go to cable. Just don't go and say you did. You'll be better off.

Check this movie out only if you are a fan of the martial arts genre. Although Cung le is an excellent martial artist, the choppy direction makes watching the fight scenes rather irritating(Watch out for Dragon Eyes to get a better glimpse of his abilities). And who designed the wigs for Dolph?? He looked horrible,although he gives a fun performance as the villain.