The Punisher

Year: 2004 Rating: R Overall Evaluation: 6.0 Significance Suppositions Story Style 6.0 / 10 7.0 / 10 5.0 / 10 6.0 / 10 Click HERE for evaluation criteria.

Style

Rated R for pervasive brutal violence (duh!), language, and brief (and pointless) nudity. Filmed pretty dark - gritty. This is good for the subject matter. A couple gross-out type violent scenes, but many potential gore shots were not taken advantage of.

Story

I'm not a Punisher comic book fan so I have no comment on how well it was adapted. Basically the story is about a special agent whose family is killed as vengeance for a job he did where the main bad guy's kid was killed. The movie mostly concerns the punishment meted out by the hero upon this bad guy. So far, so good. The problem I had was that the middle (Act 2) was extremely boring. We're supposed to be watching this guy prepare for battle (which he does) but then he never really does anything with it. His "punishment" is rather tame for a special forces guy with more guns and explosives than Rambo ever had. It is not until the very end that anything resembling real vengeance is taken. OK so what about the middle? Well, he gets involved with a group of people that end up having pretty much zero influence on him or the movie. I guess the point was to show how low he had sunk after his family died, but he doesn't really give up either . . . PICK A PLOTLINE PLEASE!!! Too many random events and just a barely interesting climax (OK, I admit the symbolic blowing up of the cars kicked butt).

Suppositions

The movie as a whole assumes a pretty much normal reality. But even this is somewhat spoiled by the way the hero acts throughout Act 2. He basically doesn't even try to hide out when he knows good and well how easy he is to find - and he doesn't even do a good job fighting when he is found. It's just hard to make sense of these elements.

Significance

While the bulk of the story is very confused, it ends with the idea that evil should, and is now going to be, punished. Although it is not backed up very well by the story at least it's a good point at the end.