Punisher

You know how most movies have a plug on the front cover- a praise from a noteworthy source?  Here's a tip: if the most notable recommendation they can muster is from a Cleveland newspaper, you can skip the movie with little fear of missing something good.

The Punisher (the 2004 release, with Tom Jane and John Travolta), is a movie with promise that just never delivers.  The premise is simple enough: an FBI undercover agent kills a local mobster's son, who retaliates by killing said agent's family.  This agent, Frank Castle, becomes the Punisher, a broken hero sworn to avenge- wait, that's not quite right.  He doesn't avenge- he punishes.  His tools are simple: guns, knives, bow and arrow.  His skills are in keeping with a highly-trained agent- no superpowers, just years of training, and an uncanny ability to take direct gun and knife wounds to the chest and recover without medical aid.  He takes no prisoners, and covets no friends. 

The promise of the movie revolves around dealing with pain and loss, and how we react to it.  The movie touches on that in the briefest of ways, but never really resolves it, or examines it in depth.  His choice to take the law into his own hands isn't really examined either; nor is his tendency to create collateral damage (like killing "innocents" who are involved with guilty parties).  It's too bad; the potential is there.  Apart from that, it's your standard shoot-em-up.

This is the second of three Punisher movies ever made, and all three have done poorly.  I haven't seen the 1989 version with Dolph Lundgren, but that's reviewed even more poorly.  Why have they done so many?  It's not as though Punisher is anywhere near as popular as Batman or Spiderman.  Here's why, in my opinion, this keeps getting revisited: in the right hands, it could be an amazing tale.  The effects need not be great- plenty of action movies have been done well- they just need someone to execute well, and weave an examination of the aforementioned issues into the tale.  If they could do that, they'd have a winner.  As it stands, Punisher is 0 for 3 in quality movies.

Rating: D+