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Directed by: Jonathan Hensleigh Starring: Thomas Jane, John Travolta, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos I was surprised by all the negative reviews this movie has gotten when I recently watched it. I found it enjoyable, to say the least, and certainly didn't think that it was bogged down or slow-paced. The movie was both action-packed (with some of the best kills in a movie I've ever seen) and well-acted (for the most part), and I will probably be buying it on DVD the next time I go to Best Buy. The story is pretty simple in that Howard Saint (Travolta) wants revenge on Frank Castle (Jane) for the accidental death of the former's son during an undercover sting. Castle's family is slaughtered and so Castle wants revenge against Saint in turn. I found Castle's background emotional enough to believe that he might actually snap and become the vigilante Punisher, and thought Jane did a great job of portraying the pain and bloodlust his character lived off of. Rebecca Romijn-Stamos was also excellent in her role as Castle's battered neighbor, although a love interest of sorts is hinted at but never developed. Her performance was a real gem and at a certain point got to me to the point where I could have cried if I had let myself. John Travolta, on the other hand, did not come across as a very intimidating villain, and was actually less formidible-seeming than his on-screen wife during the movie. His character was being played throughout the entire movie by every other character, and Travolta altogether failed to make it seem like he could have become some underground kingpin of crime. Some might say that it doesn't stick to the comic religiously, but I think that's certainly forgivable, since it's been 30 years since Vietnam. Overall, I found it enjoyable and exciting, and would certainly recommend it. RATING: 3.5 PROS: Lots of action, good performances CONS: John Travolta is not convincingly brutal ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: http://imdb.com/title/tt0330793/
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Jul 13, 2004 06:01
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 04:48 |
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it's a comic book movie, it can't be that good, or contain that much greatness beyond some shooting and fighting and maybe a little additional shooting. i'm not a big enough Punisher fan to get anal about changes from my precious Punisher; i'm enough of a fan to like this movie more than a similar shoot-'em-up that didn't feature the Punisher. the acting was decent: no major acting talent expended, no major acting foul-ups. so there was nothing to disappoint. my Baltimorean Thomas Jane was, i will say, a better Punisher than Dolph before him, doing good work with, well, bland material. all the rest of the supporting cast was the same: Rebecca Romijn-Stamos was inoffensive, Kevin Nash was an acceptable Russian, i enjoyed Roy Schieder's haircut, and so on. Travolta was tolerable here, though better in moments where he didn't talk, because what always seems phony about JT is when he's allowed to act "cool" and rant a little. and it doesn't hurt that the villain is played by someone i hate. i expected a lot more blood. since there was some blood, and cursing, and violence, i don't understand why there wasn't MORE blood. seriously. and why do bad guys working for a massive rich villain always use lovely guns like Micro-Uzis and Tec-9s when slaughtering people instead of just bringing along some assault rifles and massive drum magazines? 3.
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Jul 13, 2004 07:33
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I thought this movie was great for what it was: an action movie. I, too, was really surprised that this movie got bashed so badly after release, although it might have been due to the fact that it was released the same day as Kill Bill Vol. 2 and many people (and critics) were all hyped up about that. The one thing that most critics agreed on was that the acting was very well done, something I agree with, too. Even characters that had very small parts (like Joan's abusive boyfriend) were played well and not too awfully stereotyped. But where I disagree with most critics is the plot and the feel of the movie. First, I found the plot to capture the essence of The Punisher pretty well and many times it was very evident that Frank was tortured by the death of his family. I will admit that this also lead to one of the only real problems of the movie, that Frank spends just a little too much time sulking and drinking (and boy does he drink). Other than that I found the plot progressed well and kept my attention and all the characters were fleshed out moderately to extensively. I do think that Travolta's character wasn't nearly as strong a presence as stated by critics and I think that the Quentin Glass character became the biggest antagonist, but this gets corrected in the later parts of the film so it's forgivable. The other disagreement I have with critics is the feel of the movie. Pretty much every critic other than Richard Roeper trashed the movie about being to dark and violent and gritty. What all those people fail to realize is that that is exactly how The Punisher is supposed to be. I found the grittiness and lack of CGI refreshing. The combination of these allowed the film makers to succeed in performing a throughback to 70s action flicks. Overall, while the film was corny and tedious in areas, it kept my attention and I ended up enjoying a pretty well done Punisher film adaptation. If you go into thinking only about The Punisher and not expecting it to be a masterpiece you'll see that it accomplishes what it wanted to. 4.0/5.0
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Jul 13, 2004 07:51
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My biggest problem with this movie is that it really makes the whole whole family gets brutely slaughtered not feel right. I want to be angry and flipped out, but it's just poorly done. I want to feel how I felt when the In leon, the girls whole family was murdered. Other then that, it's a decent action flick, though it has far to little blood for being "gritty". 3.5/5
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Jul 13, 2004 10:49
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As a fan of the Punisher, I can safely say that this could have been a gritty blood-soaked atmospheric masterpiece, but it was wasted on a direct-to-video quality director. Instead it was a mediocre slow-moving mess of a film. Some of the deaths were interesting, and Thomas Jane was born to play the Punisher, but the plot was totally mangled and undecipherable, and suffers from Akira syndrome. 2.5/5
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Jul 14, 2004 04:43
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I thought this was a pretty kick rear end film. I'm a huge Punisher and comics fan in general. He's definitely got that Punisher persona. Despite them taking a different twist of him living in FL (i think) and being a police officer. There isn't a bloodbath as I expected. Although, he definitely gets his loving revenge. I was laughing with excitement throughout the action at the end of the movie. It was sweet as gently caress. Travolta is tolerable and gets killed, which I enjoyed thoroughly. Man, had him kill his best friend and wife! Awesome! The characters based off of Ennis's Welcome Back Frank arc are portrayed differently. Bumpo is now a not-as-fat regular person living across the hall. He was the owner of the building in the comic. Joan is way too attractive and balanced in this movie. In the comic she's very timid and does not have very awesome tits. I've never really been attracted to Rebecca Romijn-Stamos. But I think she's loving smokin' in this movie and her acting is good. Spacker Dave is essentially the same cracked out, yet, charasmatic individual as in the comic. There has to be at least one other Punisher movie. I would definitely enjoy it under the same writer and director. 3.5
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Jul 14, 2004 18:13
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Boring movie. Entertaining for the last 15-25 minutes to see the bloody rampage. plus seeing travolta being dragged by a car They could have made this a lot more what the punisher comics are about rather than an entire hour of boring back story. 2/5
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Jul 14, 2004 21:47
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quote:Dr. Gojo Shioji came out of the closet to say: That is actually refreshing to me as well. It's nice to see an action movie where they use the classical explosions and stuntman formula instead of rendering everything in a computer. But for an action movie, well, it seemed to be lacking action. I enjoyed seeing Mr. Castle as a tortured soul, but that's about all I remember seeing. The action was great, when it was there. I think there should have been a lot more scenes of Frank stacking his revenge against Howard Saints. There were really only two major fights. I go to an action movie to see action, not an expose on the human spirit. 3.5/5
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Jul 31, 2004 23:26
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I have mixed feelings about his movie. Frank Castle was a tortured soul, but only after everything happened to him. He saw his family get murdered, and the best he could come up with was uttering his wifes name before he "died." The emotion of just seeing your entire family slaughtered just wasn't there... he acted like "eh, just another mission" while walking past the bodies of his family, after pulling his dead father off of him. The best acting during this movie was Frank drinking his memories away, and that's not saying much. The same goes for the other characters that had tragic moments. The best they could come up with at the time was an obviously forced frown. OK, you are a major crime boss and are used to seeing dead people... but you are standing over the dead body of your son! Show SOMETHING! Or you are the crime bosses wife attending the funeral of your son... if you care enough to send every man you have under your control to kill the person responsible for his death, at least shed a drat tear at his funeral! I could see a great movie wanting to shine through this POS, but the fact that every single character had a poker face during the movie and only cracked a slight frown when the most horrible of things happened to them totally removed me from getting into the scenes. It was like watching an ant hill get stepped on... I know things are dying but I really don't care in the slightest.
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Sep 2, 2004 09:03
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God I fucking love Diablo 3 gold, it even paid for this shitty title
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This move is horrible This movie dumbs down one of Marvel's Grittiest characters and put's him in an "action" movie which felt less watchable than a PG-13 version of "Bad Boys" The one thing that could have made this movie slightly better was a whole new script/director/anything else Edit: I feel the urge to break down this movie piece by piece so that hopefully I could explain my position or have others try to explain their reason for giving this anything greater than a "1". But this is not a discussion forum HAmbONE fucked around with this message at 07:03 on Sep 9, 2004 |
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Sep 9, 2004 06:59
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Through the whole thing I kept thinking "This isn't really Frank Castle" but as a revenge story it's okay. They play up a lot of sympathy and emotion in the character that...just isn't there for The Punisher. Showing up in front of thousands of cameras after you were presumed dead to say "Hey, sup?" and leave, talking about how happy memories keep him going, and putting up with his neighbors beyond simple acknowledgement seem like the actions of a director who's trying to make a point rather than the actions of the character. Punisher is unique because he's a cold bastard who enjoys killing, and used his family's death, although tragic, as a reason to return to it. What we have here is the same hollow man looking for some vengence and trying to recover from his loss that we've seen in countless other films. The violence was rather strange because the content of what was supposed to be happening was almost always much more than what we're seeing, which is the anti-thesis to the current Ennis-run of the comic. 3.5/5 for action and violence in a typical revenge flick
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Sep 10, 2004 05:20
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I went into the theater with very low expectations, as the last comic movie to be billed as grim and gritty was "Daredevil" (not the worst movie I've ever seen, but the worst marvel movie by far). I got what I went in there for, essentially. Frank Castle, family dies, becomes set on getting revenge. Basic concept. It doesn't fail at that. The fault I do find with it (which says a lot. Im normally very content with comic movies) is probably the little amount of killing he does. I mean he has a pretty decent body count, but Howard Saint, if he is really such a huge crime boss, should have dozens of people around him AT ALL TIMES. At the end, when he "brings everyone in", only around 12 people are there. Would be good for one fight scene, not that great for a climax. However, I did enjoy the couple of gags in the movie, and overall I was satisfied when Frank got his revenge. I was also really impressed how he screwed with Saint, his wife, and Quentin. Hopefully in 2, like in all movies, we'll get a bit more mayhem, since 1/3 of the movie won't be dedicated to setting up the origin. 4.0/5 for a pretty nice incarnation of the Punisher overall.
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Sep 10, 2004 05:32
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I felt that the trailers for The Punisher made it look extremely promising, but in its ultimate execution, the product falls a little flat. It's not BAD, really - it's just average, with some great sequences and comedy chopped up by lengthy boring spots. The Punisher fails to do much punishing and the opening 30 minutes is just waaaay too long for something we all know from the get-go. It's a revenge picture, the family dies, and getting to that point is NOT half the fun. Even so, with wall-to-wall tight performances and a few memorable sequences, I can't say it's just outright bland. It has its points, to be sure. Thomas Jane is great in, the final action sequence is rockin' and there are little flashes of brilliance. But too much is cut too short (note how quickly the Harry Heck stuff flies by - it's about a minute once the action starts) and too much of what's left is just too slow and bland to be appropriate to this character. 2.5/5... not bad, but not all that great or memorable, either. If this wasn't called "The Punisher," would we really care?
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Sep 13, 2004 21:17
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I didn't hold it too strictly to the comic. I really enjoyed the movie and think they did a good job with the action sequences. Always bonus points with me when they don't use CGI through the whole damned movie. I couldn't even stand wathcing The Hulk because of that. I didn't like all the CGI in Spiderman either. I thought there was plenty of action and most of the background stuff they put in was needed to get people in to the story who had not read the comics. I give it 3.5.
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Sep 16, 2004 16:00
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I am a big fan of "The Punisher" as a kid I always found him to be awesome. I was so excited when this movie came out. I went to the theaters and saw it, but I was disapointed. The plot of the adaptation from vol.3 was ok I thought. There was no real awesome parts from the comic though. There was no man eating polar bears. There was the Russian, but he didn't say anything, or call Frank "Big boy." The ending I was happy with. It was my favorite part of the movie, the part of revenge. All and all I have to give this movie a pretty high rating. Even though I thought it could be better, I was happy with it. 3.5/5
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Sep 18, 2004 02:46
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They spent too much time on the Punisher's neighbors, who I hate, and not enough time on the actual punishment. I think they loving nailed the character, though. The action was brutal, and very well done. TheChirurgeon described it best by saying that there isn't a hit in that movie that doesn't look like it hurt. Overall, I think this movie was everything a Punisher movie should have been. And the Russian kicked rear end. Kevin Nash actually got stabbed filming that. 4/5
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Sep 18, 2004 15:23
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I've never read the comic, so I'm reviewing this as a movie alone. I thought this totally kicked rear end. After the negative reviews I've read everywhere I was expecting a fairly bland or silly movie, but this was neither. Despite it's comic book roots, this was really a near-perfect throwback to 80's action movies; I dunno, even the guy who played Frank Castle had an "80's action hero" look about him, if that makes any sense to anyone. As stated above, it was just hardcore, well done action scenes rather than the unbearable, rendered Kung Fu poo poo that no one has done right since the Matrix, and is completely ruining action movies. AND THANK GOD FOR THAT. Frank Castle never does a spinning jump kick, nor does he leap 20 stories off a building, nor does he dodge bullets. You know what you did in the 80's when you were in a gun fight? You put on some loving kevlar and ATE THE BULLETS FOR BREAKFAST. That's what Castle does. He doesn't know magic and he isn't "overcoming the limits of reality". No cartwheels and backflips here. I have no idea where comments about a lack of action come from. Granted, every other scene isn't about action and killing, but whenever one does pop up (which is still pretty frequently), you can be sure that it's going to kick rear end. And of course, as expected the finale scene is exactly what you'd expect-- one guy with an entire military supply catalog strapped to his back works his way into and up a building, killing about 58,000 people along the way. The acting was exactly what it needed to be-- not so brilliantly realistic that you confuse it for a drama, but more than enough to save it from campiness. The comic relief was also great, I think; I really liked the neighbors and thought they did a great job of not only giving The Punisher's character some dimension (since Frank really only exists for the first 30 minutes or so), but it saved the movie from getting *too* wrapped up in death and violence. In other words, you won't feel like a psychopath for enjoying this. Also, as a note to whomever said his acting wasn't real enough while he watched his family die; I thought the same thing too, but considering that he clearly comes from a family of bad asses, like his dad before him, it's obvious that he's the type of guy who keeps his cool until the mission is over. He's used to being in situations much more tense than what happened to his family, and while I do admit it's weird to see a guy run past his dead relatives to go kick a bunch of rear end, that's exactly what a "roughneck" persona is all about. Once it was all over I think he did a fine job of letting it out. You have to remember, this isn't Danny Tanner-- this is a seriously hard motherfucker from a long line of seriously hard motherfuckers. Anyway, all told, this is a straightforward movie that knows it's place in the world and does exactly what it's supposed to do. It's not meant to insult the viewer's intelligence, but it's not trying to win any awards either. If you want a movie that's got a ton of rear end kicking, a decent amount of humor, a simplistic but very engaging story, and lots of characters that you'll enjoy watching do whatever it is they do, this is it. Unless you just don't like action movies, I can't think of one thing that's universally dislikable about it. 5/5 Zanzibar fucked around with this message at 04:04 on Oct 17, 2004 |
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Oct 17, 2004 04:00
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 04:48 |
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I was forced to watch this movie and am now actively hunting down the man responsible. I was at least hoping for some quilty violence and good action. You can throw the storyline out the window for all i care. As long as the movie offered up some great revenge-style killing like that of Kill Bill or Payback, i was all for it. Sadly that was not the case. Even with the occational knife through the mouth or arrow through the head, this movie felt very very PG. I mean it was shot in Tampa for crying out loud. How dark and violent can Tampa possibly be? Violence level aside, this movie is everything that is worng with action movies these days lacking any creativity to the action sequences. Watch it for the sake of it being an comic book movie and move on. 2/5
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Nov 1, 2004 19:33
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