Lexi Alexander: Breaking the Blood Splattered Glass Ceiling

America has this weird obsession with the entertainment industry.

Ever since the the dawn of the arts, people have spent their lives entertaining others. There's nothing new or inherently modern about that. But artists or entertainers being this higher species of human, these gods that we can't strive to be or know, that we should obsess over their every whim, that's a recent trend. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is, there are few people in entertainment business who I would truly want to know on a personal level. Few I would want as a friend. Few I would truly admire.

There is one director who I want to be best friends with. Who I think is the coolest woman alive.
And her name, is Lexi Alexander.

THE FACTS:
 Lexi is from Mannheim, Germany (so is Daniel Eckert, my favorite German in the world).
She was the world kickboxing champion at 19.
In her 20s, she played Kitana in Mortal Kombat: Live.

                                          That's her in the blue.

Ok, sidenote:
MORTAL KOMBAT: LIVE!? This was a thing we had in the 90s? How has Buzzfeed never dedicated an article to this?
Man the 90s were absolutely ridiculous. You know, in the most X-TREME way possible.

So, for all of the other badass things Lexi has done, including an Academy Award Nominated Short (which was apparently so good, it made one reviewer say, "Fuck 'Rocky', this is the best film about a boxer that I’ve ever seen."), I am enamored over Lexi for the one major motion picture she ever made.

Punisher: War Zone.

Punisher: War Zone. The 2nd reboot of the Punisher. And if there was ever a character that needed two reboots, it was him.

When Dolph Lundgren played him, he didn't even wear a skull on his chest

And in the Thomas Jane movie, the villain was fat John Travolta.

So when Lexi got to be the director, she wanted her Punisher to be the most Punishy-iest Punisher to ever appear on screen.

We're not talking Wolverine here, who although he's covered in blood in the comics

He somehow stays dry in every X-Men movie...

Nope. We're talking about Frank Castle:

The Punisher is the living embodiment of America's love of violence for violence's sake. Lexi Alexander got that from jump street.

This scene takes place about 5 minutes into the movie. I repeat, this is the opening fucking scene.


The first kill in this movie is a decapitation.
 I would be happy if that was the big finale kill. Nope, this is the opening kill. This movie's beginning looks like any other action movie's ending.
Yeah, this is how the Punisher should work.

And Lexi doesn't just spend the rest of the movie being quintessentially Punisher, she also get's self referential toward other action movies.

This was 2008. Do you remember the stupid wave of pakour scenes in action movies. Punisher: War Zone has a parkour scene...



...in which the little freerunning fucks get bodily disintegrated by Frank Castle's rocket launcher.
And you cheer along.

Now, there have been plenty of R-rated comic book movies: Blade, Sin City, Watchmen.
But none of them, until Punisher: War Zone, have been directed by a woman. 

And it's not like women don't direct action movies, because Katheryn Bigelow.

And it's not like women don't make bloody movies, because Mary Harron

But other than Lexi Alexander, female directors don't overtly try to make stylistically violent shoot 'em up fests like Punisher: War Zone. And why not?

If someone wants to be an inspiration to women in the arts, I see no better way than to beat the boys at their own game: blood and guts. And Lexi made a movie in which the Punisher
a) punches a man through (not in) the face and
b) shoots a man's head off before he can be arrested
IN THE SAME SCENE


We don't have a female Quentin Tarantino, and the only reason why is because this is Lexi's only big movie.

I love this movie, but it bombed in the box office. And mainly, this is because nerds weren't reviewing it. As this movie ages, it gets rectified, by me and my nerds.
When my people did see this movie, we loved it. It was a revelation! I mean, you saw the opening scene; the first kill involves a man's head being cleaved from his neck! That's the Punisher.

And guess what boys, a woman did that. 

 
So there you go; if there was ever a woman I was going to rally behind, and that I would dare to declare a feminist icon, it's gotta be Lexi.
Kickboxer
Kitana
Director of one of the most violent, gore filled, balls to the wall action movies, that makes me jump on my chair and scream "FUCK YES!!! KILL THEM ALL!! WHOOOOO!",

it's Lexi Alexander.
And if I ever meet her, beer's on me.