For a flick that was almost universally panned The Punisher wasn’t really that bad. As a matter of fact, taking into account the oeuvre to which it belongs, it was actually a pretty decent flick.
I never got into the Punisher comics. In thinking about this last night it occurred to me that I never got into most of the popular comics. Superheroes – with the exception of the Green Lantern – bored me and I’m not a fan of reality so stuff like The Punisher, The ‘Nam and the old GI Combat books didn’t do much for me either. Odd, for a dude who was as heavily into comics as I was I wonder what I read.
That’s all beside the point. The Punisher comics remind me of the first Terminator movie: big dude goes around killing people with no apparent point. Well, that sort of sums up the film if you add in a bit of neighborly comic relief. I give points to Thomas Jane for being both more believable and more intelligable than Dolph Lundgren. I give big points to Rebecca Romjin-Stamos for starting to turn into a very respectable female lead (while simultaneously deducting points for marrying John Stamos fer chrissakes).
Like I said, within its oeuvre – Bad Boys, The Terminator, &c – The Punisher acquits itself nicely. Isn’t that all we really expect from a summer movie?