The Punisher DVD Review:

Comic book stories seem to be taking over our theaters these days and there is nothing to be done about it as long as audiences keep buying tickets. In some cases it is unfortunate when a film is made, but in many ways The Punisher is a nice break away from the traditional comic adaptation. The Punisher is a gritty, painful, and often unrelenting tale of revenge. This isn’t a superhero, but instead just a regular man trying to slaughter anyone involved in the death of his wife and son.

This is not a happy movie. I feel I must warn any viewers immediately, that way if you still have the urge to see it, you may be able to appreciate the
dark story of an alcoholic and depressed anti-hero.

The film begins with a sting gone wrong, and suddenly a mob boss’s son is dead, even though he shouldn’t be. This causes the mob boss to take revenge against all of the cops involved, specifically Frank Castle, a key player in the sting. The timing of the attack on Frank is unfortunate and happens to be during a family reunion. What follows is a brutal and dark sequence of many innocent people being slaughtered. Although it is necessary to fuel
Castle to seek out his own revenge, the sequence goes on far too long and soon it is the audience which is being punished. The only saving grace of
the scene is that some of the characters are given the opportunity to fight back, so it comes off a little more like a battle and less like a slaughter.

When the smoke finally clears, Castle is near dead, and his wife and child are far past dead. In a strange and slightly cliché twist, a man picks
Castle out of the water and takes him to an island to nurse him to health. We aren’t supposed to ask who the man is because it is an action film and as
long as things explode, we are supposed to be satisfied.

Once Castle has recovered, he returns to get revenge. Thankfully the film lightens up somewhat once he moves into a rundown apartment building. The other tenants include Mr. Bumpo, an overweight loser, Spacker Dave, the pierced loser, and Joan (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos), the attractive woman who lets herself get involved with abusive men. There is a strange family in these tenants, and although there is no reason for it, they immediately accept Castle as one of their own, often putting themselves at extreme risk in order to be loyal. This may be the only redeeming quality in the entire film.

The film is most notable for its extreme violence, which never seems to let up. Perhaps the best sequence in the film is a long fight scene within the
apartment between a very large muscle man and Castle. Most of the time it seems to be a one way fight, but half the fun is watching Castle attempt
many different ways to bring him down, followed by failure each time. I found this sequence much more bearable than the torture sequence, where
characters are not even given a chance to fight back.

A well acted film that build in tension and humor, The Punisher had the potential of being something great, but for some reason it never quite
reaches its full potential. Even with a great villain death, not to mention John Travolta as the villain, there was something left out of the story which ended up making the whole film seem anti-climactic. At the end I felt that a step had been skipped and I needed to go back and find out what it was. Perhaps the problem was that the film couldn’t decide completely what it wanted to be.

Extras:
Director’s (Jonathan Hensleigh) Audio Commentary
Keeping it Real: Punisher Stunts (27:45)
War Journal: On the Set of “The Punisher” (29:59)
music video: Drowning Pool
2 Deleted Scenes

Ryan Izay

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