I love this character, a great comic book antihero (or is a hero, not sure).
I wont go into to many details regarding his motivations and wot not as it would spoil it for the rest of you.
This movie adaptation is at best adequate, which is unfortunate to say the lesat. The action scenes arnt really up to the standards we have become accustomed to with movies of today, the effects are.. well there isnt a lot to go wrong with as its just explosions and the like so no complaints there. I think the problem is that it was all bit lackluster. By that I mean you never really feel that bad for him, and his vengeance never really heats up all that much. The result being a film which plods along to its inevitable conclusion, one that you know is coming almost from the end of the title sequence.
John Travolta's portrayal of the villain is pretty much sidelined and you cant help but feel he is there for his paycheque and not much else.
Basically I think they have made The Punisher way too nice and although Im not an advocate of violence for violence sake, this isnt violent enough... The Punisher was not a "nice" man, he was fundamentaly a good man that no longer beilieved in the justice system, but never a "nice" man.
Finally, this film couldnt make up its mind if it was going to be a comicbook super hero tale with super villain baddies or a serious action movie, it needs to be one or the other, not some strange amagamation of the two. By this i mean (possible movie spoiler) as an example, when the odd hitman known as The Russian arrives to kill Frank, well in the comic he is an indestructable insane genetically altered man, in the movie he looks identical, has the same comicbook name, even seems to be indestructable and impervious to pain. Then rsther abruptly he is defeated and no more is mentioned. I wouldnt have a problem with this but it felt so incongruous to the rest of the movie that it was just plain out of place and very wrong.
Anyway, its worth a look still, though I would wait for the DVD release.
5/10 for the movie
8/10 for the great website The Punisher
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