Rate The Punisher

[Flexor the Mighty!]

For a movie called the Punisher there wasn't very much Punishment dealt out. It made me appreciate the Dolph Lungren version more though. It needed more action and less of the idiotic "plot element" of the two losers and thier hot chick neighbor crap. I gave it a 4 or the end scene with Travolta and the fight with Kevin Nash.

JT - "You killed my son."
*boom*
Punisher-"Make that both of them. Made you kill your best friend. Made you kill your wife."

Travolta was horrible.

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

I gave it a 6.

So far, the average is 5.6

AR

 

[barsoomcore]

I likewise gave it a 6, mainly for Thomas Jane (who I thought did a credible job), and for the very well-done set-up portion (up to the whole family-gets-wiped-out scene). It started off so well, in fact, that I thought I was about to get something really special, but no. Later action scenes did NOT deliver (though "The Russian" was great, but that fight scene was pretty flat), and the annoying comic relief was, as is so often the case, merely annoying without being comic.

If it was going to be hard, it should have been harder -- was there some reason the bad guys left the annoying comic relief alive? Why not just shoot the poor bastards right there? I mean, they've gunned down little kids and old people, why are they suddenly so squeamish? And the final conflagration just didn't muster up the required blow-out factor. Oh, and they gave him that AWESOME black GTO and then smunched it the first time we saw it cruise. Come on.

That said, the story moved along without much pain, I thought Travolta had some really good moments (is it just me, or has he become a sort of low-rent Gary Oldman (who has himself become a sort of low-rent Christopher Walken)?), and the gun noises were pretty good. And hey, Roy Scheider!