f13.net

Just got back from screening a print of Punisher, and I must say, there are many worse movies you could be seeing.

Sure, it isnt going to be a spectacular movie like Spiderman, or Xmen, the source material isnt that kind of "superhero" ish.  All together, quite the enjoyable flick.

They changed the origional punisher setup story a bit, but its nothing too drastic.  From what I remember, origional punisher had Castle losing his family mostly as an accident, when they got caught in a cross fire between two mob organizations.  He then flips because the police do nothing.  New Punisher gets slightly more personal, in that a mob bosses son dies in a sting operation that Castle set up, and mob boss retaliates by killing Castle's ENTIRE FAMILY (both sides, 3 generations!!!) in an head-for-an-eye kind of payback.

Only thing I could really complain about was that it was FAR to predictable in most instances.

However, on a big plus side, a large chunk of the material seems to be pulled almost verbatem out of the comic-books (I have a comic back at the parents place that pretty much blow for blow covers his fight with "The Russian".

All in all, I think i would give it a solid 6/10.  Worth watching, but nothing to scream and rave about.

Forgive my comic book ignorance here....

Is The Punisher anything more than The Crow without the "hero" being dead? From the previews it looks exactly like that. Seeing as I thought The Crow was a great movie would I like this or would my comic book ignorance just cause me to think of it as a ripoff?

The Punisher predates The Crow comic and movie by ohhhh, 20 years or so.

Think Mack Bolan, except with a super-hero like costume. In the comics, initially, he used "mercy bullets" which I guess were like rubber bullets, something non-lethal, to take out superheroes like Spider-Man and Daredevil who got in the way of the carnage. Since there are no superheroes in the movie, I'd imagine those get left out.

What do we use to take out John Travolta who seems to get in the way of good acting?

Ahh, I forgot Travolta was in this. That precludes me from seeing this in a movie theatre. Seeing his big, meaty face on a large screen makes me nauseous. Seriously, just look at the size of that fuckers face. It looks like he did a Hannibal Lecter and is wearing someone else's face over his head...

You're almost right, Travolta is actually Xenu, he came to earth and made a suit out of Pre-scientologist Travolta's skin.

And yes, Punisher was around well before The Crow, though it's hard to say The Crow "ripped off" the Punisher since James O'Barr created The Crow character as an outlet to "get revenge" because his fiance was killed by a drunk driver.  So while the concepts are rather similar, it's not terribly outlandish for two people to seperately come up with revenge fantasy comic characters.

That information is copyrighted by the Church and cannot be released to the general public. They are not ready to know this. They are not Clear. Submit yourself to your nearest auditing center for removal of all lingering engrams.

"Bad" would be the Dolph Lundgren version. If it's better than that, I suppose it must be at least tolerable. Especially if it tries to stay true to the Comic somewhat (Although my idea of a good Punisher flick would be a "Henry Rollins meets Taxi Driver meets Tim Bradstreet" kinda thing).

Travolta can't play villians worth a damn though. Examples: Broken Arrow, Face Off (I haven't even gotten near Battlefield Earth). Not only does he have a large head, but it's that fucking grin: The guy is cheesy. Then again, so are comic books. Might be a perfect fit.

Just saw this last night.  I was disappointed.  Just to let you know, I never saw the Lundgren version.  

It starts decently, with a sting gone a little bad.  The movie slows down (acceptably) as we learn about Castle's family and why we should care when they are wiped out by the bad guys.  

After that, just when you expect The Punisher to begin purging the world of bad guys, we get psuedo-comic relief and boredom.  This drags on for far too long.  

The ending is pretty good, but that kind of action should have come about 45 minutes earlier in the movie.  The second half of the film should have been non-stop action, but it wasn't.  

I'd say, if you're a punisher fan, it's probably worth seeing.  If you're simply a comics fan, wait until it's a rental.  If you're neither, don't bother with this movie.

EDIT:  Travolta didn't ruin the movie for me.  His role wasn't really that big.  In fact, I think we saw more of the shlubs who live in Frank's apartment building than we saw of Barbarino.

You forgot to add the Oh so craptacular "Swordfish". Ugh.


I would like to see this movie, just cause I always had a liking for the Punisher, but I think I will have to see Hellboy and Kill Bill 2 first.

Yeah, but at least Swordfish had Halle's rack on display less than an hour into it (leaving you free to turn the channel/exit the theatre at that point).

Channel? Theatre?

Isn't that why they invented the MPEG/AVI formats and the internet so we could download nice 30 second snippets of nude celebs?

This is probably why I forgot to mention Swordfish. I've never seen it (because I easily got the only thing I wanted out of it).

Yeah, swordfish was oddly like Monster's Ball in that way.