CEBU, Philippines - Fresh from a widely acclaimed performance as the villainous Theron in the blockbuster “300,” Dominic West now portrays another wicked character – gangster Billy Russoti aka Jigsaw – in Columbia Pictures and Marvel Studios’ action thriller “Punisher: War Zone.”
In the film, ruthless vigilante-hero Frank Castle aka The Punisher (Ray Stevenson) sets his sights on overeager mob boss Billy Russoti, as the former wages his one-man war on the world of organized crime. After Russoti is left horribly disfigured by Castle, he sets out for vengeance under his new alias: Jigsaw. With the Punisher Task Force hot on his trail and the FBI unable to take Jigsaw in, Frank must stand up to the formidable army that Jigsaw has recruited before more of his evil deeds go unpunished.
Dominic West relished the chance to play the villain, Billy “Jigsaw” Russoti, a vain mobster whose run-in with the Punisher results in a gruesome accident in a glass crusher that leaves him horribly disfigured. He recalls, “When I read the part, I instantly got excited about it because he gets to be the most vain man in the world who then gets smashed up and becomes the most evil man in the world.”
West describes Jigsaw as “absolutely amoral, disinterested in everything except what he needs at that moment, whether he has to kill someone or get his money or whatever. He's a total psychopath.” West sat in the make-up chair for two hours every day for the necessary application of prosthetics, masks and wigs. “We wanted to come up with something that was different than what's in the comic book,” explains visual effects supervisor Robert Short. “What plays in comic books doesn't usually play onscreen. We had to come up with something that was much more sophisticated.”
While he didn’t enjoy the hours in the makeup chair, West did appreciate the benefits of working with most of his face covered. “It's very liberating to wear a mask,” he says. “It means that you're not hampered by naturalism or even one's own looks. One can be fully a different character, and I suppose that's always what excited me about acting.”
Even as the film certainly aims to please die-hard Punisher fans, West believes “Punisher: War Zone” will undoubtedly attract new audiences as well. “I think that the Punisher is an appealing character because he's flawed. With a lot of superheroes, there's right and wrong, but Frank lives in a grey area. He's a character that sees injustice but actually corrects it with an injustice. A little bit of doing the wrong thing is ultimately right.”
“It's an R-rated film so we don't pull any punches,” adds West. “There are levels of nuance. There's parody and irony. There’s satire on things like the vigilante hero, the American health care system and certainly, as played out in my character, recruiting people for the Army. I think there's a lot of grown up humor in it.”
Opening soon across the Philippines, “Punisher: War Zone” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International.