This is a late review, but it’s one that I feel should be written, so come and join me as I dive into two of the three punisher movies. Be warned, there are spoilers and I am vulgar.
I had the fortune of watching a videocam bootleg version of this cinematic trash out of the corner of my eye while I did some work over the weekend because it was in theaters for what seemed like a couple days.
What can I say? I feel sorry and embarrassed for anyone involved in this movie, including but not limited to those who paid or snuck into the theatre to watch the thing. I would almost feel bad for myself if I didn’t get a chance to tear it a new one.
First off, anyone who didn’t like The Punisher (2004)
- I’m not a big fan of Punisher comics, however, Thomas Jane is a bad-ass you can believe is Frank Castle. The story in the 2004 is not only more believable than any origin I’ve read in the comics (Castle’s wife and kids were having a picnic and got killed for witnessing/crossfire mob shiz blah, blah, blah. It bores me just recapping it because of how sugar-coated and stereotypical everybody portrays those scenes with daises and lollipops on a red and white checkered blanket) but it ups the ante times 10 by killing off 3-5 generations of both sides of the Castle family, Franks and his Wife’s: Grandparents, Aunts, Nephews, Siblings, Infants, Dogs, Cats, etc. while at a family reunion. After having his wife and kid run over by a truck, Castle not only goes down like a bad-ass, but gets shot in the chest in one of the most chilling voyeuristic wide shots.
- One of the best fight scenes ever produced in my circuit boards opinion is the one against the Russian. It’s best described as ‘Looney Tunesesque’ with its thunderous battle that cannot be heard by the neighbors because they’re playing an opera record while making dinner. The scene seriously rivals epic fight scenes between Bugs Bunny and Fudd in “Rabbit of Seville” and “What’s Opera Doc?”
- Mark Collie as a bad-ass guitar playing assassin. Like El Mariachi but good
- Because of the aforementioned, and because it is fairly well acted, it is for the most part directed well and a pretty good movie.
- Roy Scheider acted in it for a reason, because he agrees with me, God rest him.
The only thing people can crap on this movie about is when it gets cheesy with the neighbors or they don’t like John Travolta as a person/religious individual/actor. That’s about it. Oh yeah, and the bad 2000 alternative rock songs thrown in to appeal to the masses. All in all, a pretty kick-ass movie that I can actually watch more than once and enjoy, and I’m a film snob. It’s serious how it needs to be, it’s funny where it needs, it’s stunning when it needs to be and it’s cheese because it needs to be and realizes the difference between these and distinguishes itself quite well. Justice was being served. To me, this is the Batman Begins of the Punisher universe, I actually like the Punisher based on this movie.
So this is the plot from what I gathered from its mangled writing and direction: Frank Castle kills an undercover FBI agent or cop when he drops in and starts raining bullets into a warehouse, he then tosses a dude into a glass recycler that mares dudes face turning him into… JIGSAW! He feels so badly for killing the agent, which confuses me because to me, Punisher at this point would say something like “You gotta crack a few eggs to make an omelette” or something like that. This movie sums up everything that doesn’t appeal to me about the Punisher, all that guilty by association fodder, killing people that would probably reform if you just broke their limb, killing ‘bad’ people because they can never be anything other than that. One of the good things about this movie was it actually made me feel bad and root for Jigsaw and his insane brother who was probably the best character in the entire movie; a supporting character has more dimension than any other major character in the movie. And as far as characters go, it has so many stereotypes, clichés, lifted scenes and dialogue from so many other sources it borders on copyright infringement if the rest of it wasn’t bland as a stale, unsalted cracker.
