The Punisher.

Akaran_D · Post by **Akaran_D** » April 16, 2004, 12:20 am

Anyone going to see it tommorow or this weekend?

Dregor Thule · Post by **Dregor Thule** » April 16, 2004, 12:50 am

If you pay me to go see it (and I don't meant just buy my ticket) then yes. Otherwise you can put it away in the back room with the other Punisher movie.

valryte · Post by **valryte** » April 16, 2004, 6:06 am

Dude, Kill Bill 2 comes out tomorrow. Fuck the punisher!

Pahreyia · Post by **Pahreyia** » April 16, 2004, 10:22 am

So... Am I the only one that actually wanted to see this movie?

Dregor Thule · Post by **Dregor Thule** » April 16, 2004, 10:26 am

Pahreyia wrote:So... Am I the only one that actually wanted to see this movie?

Bad taste seems to run in your genes.

Ashur · Post by **Ashur** » April 16, 2004, 10:44 am

DJ on the radio yesterday saw advance showing and said that even if you are the biggest Punisher fan in the world you will have considered your money wasted.

See Kill Bill Vol 2.

vn_Tanc · Post by **vn_Tanc** » April 16, 2004, 10:46 am

even if you are the biggest Punisher fan in the world you will have considered your money wasted

from the reviews I've been reading that first "even" there should be changed to "especially".

Akaran_D · Post by **Akaran_D** » April 16, 2004, 11:12 am

I didn't like Kill Bill 1 enough to spend what little cash I have on KB2...

Bubba Grizz · Post by **Bubba Grizz** » April 16, 2004, 11:37 am

It is hard to see what they can bring that is new to the story. All I can picture is better special effects but the story is getting tired. How can you dis Dolph? They could have picked a different obscure hero to make a movie on like maybe the Ghost Rider or maybe a team like The Avengers or the Fantastic Four.

Akaran_D · Post by **Akaran_D** » April 16, 2004, 11:39 am

EW.com's Review on the Punisher

The Punisher is based on a Marvel comic book, but there's little that's Marvelous about it. Early on, Frank Castle (Tom Jane), a recently retired FBI agent, sees everyone at his family reunion, including his wife and son, mowed down by a team of men in black toting huge guns. You may feel a tug of dismay at the flatness of the staging, the crude come-on of a movie that asks you to get riled up over the slaughter of characters it has barely introduced. Surely this must be the setup for something a little less...basic.

Castle gets shot in the chest and exploded into the water, but somehow he survives with hardly a mark. (That somehow is never explained. Whatever.) He then seeks vengeance on the man behind the mayhem: Howard Saint (John Travolta), a silky Mr. Big whose own son was killed during Castle's final undercover op.

Since the movie is called ''The Punisher,'' I assumed Castle would reinvent himself as some sort of badass sadist alter ego. Well, here's what the alter ego consists of: He puts on a T-shirt adorned with a skull logo that might have been lifted off a 20-year-old Megadeth album; he soups up his car so that it looks like Mel Gibson's demon-mobile in ''Mad Max''; he dons a floor-length leather coat; and that's about it. Oh, I forgot: Jane lowers his voice by an octave so that he can utter every line in an I-mean-business monotone glum enough to make Steven Seagal sound like John Gielgud.

''The Punisher'' is a moronically inept and tedious piece of death-wish trash. The character, when he originally appeared in 1974, was a brooding Vietnam veteran who drew on his war experience to avenge his family's death -- an overheated premise echoed three years later in Hollywood's first Vietnam film, ''Rolling Thunder.'' Stripped of its topical context (and now set in darkest Tampa), ''The Punisher'' has been turned into the revenge-thriller equivalent of generic oatmeal. It's a flavorless two hours of blood, bullets, and sado swagger.

Castle spends too much time getting to know his neighbors, who include Rebecca Romijn-Stamos and ''Six Feet Under'''s Ben Foster as a grunge sissy with three lip rings, and he fights too many assassins, notably a giant Russian in the film's one vaguely diverting action scene. Why doesn't he just go after Travolta in his marbly lair? It's a measure of the movie's incompetence that this villain remains oddly exposed, surrounded by feckless associates and bodyguards, but Castle takes forever to get to him. Travolta has done his sinister mock seethe once too often, and he makes the added mistake of playing Saint as a bit of a nervous Nellie. By the end, I wasn't rooting for vengeance. I was rooting for Travolta's haughty-bad-guy tics to be put out of their misery.

(Posted:04/14/04)

I may go see KB2 instead. /sigh

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » April 16, 2004, 11:40 am

The trailer didn't really make me want to see it. Which is bad for a trailer.

On the other hand, the soundtrack isn't too bad.

Burke · Post by **Burke** » April 16, 2004, 2:42 pm

This is the 15th anniversary re-release of the 1989 action classic that
starred respected Swedish thespian Dolph Lundgren, beloved by North
American audiences for his soulful portrayal of He-Man in "Masters of
the Universe" and Ivan Drago in Rocky IV...

Oh wait, this is actually a new adaptation of the Marvel comic book. How
unnecessary! Sure, the original "Punisher" flick was a cheapie B-movie,
but it was campy fun and the action scenes were surprisingly effectively
crafted by director Mark Goldblatt, the editor of some of the best
action films ever made ("Terminator" and T2, "Rambo: First Blood part
II", Starship Troopers, Commando...).

"The Punisher" (2004) is the directorial debut of Jonathan Hensleigh,
who wrote "Die Hard with a vengeance" and script-doctored a bunch of
Bruckheimer flicks. Well, this script certainly could have used some
doctoring, and any of Bruckheimer's directors-for-hire could have made a
less feeble movie than this. I've seen better straight-to-video Van
Damme vehicles!

So you got this dude Frank Castle (Thomas Jane) who used to be in the
army and who's now an undercover op for the FBI in Tampa. During an arms
deal bust, one of the sons of big-time mobster Howard Saint (John
Travolta) is gunned down and Saint demands bloody satisfaction, Keyser
Soze-style. He orders a hit not only on Castle but on his son, his wife,
his parents and his wife's parents, who are conveniently having a
barbecue altogether in Puerto Rico. Somehow Frank survives and reemerges
months later, returning to the family villa to get his father's guns
(which are still at the crime scene?) and stumbling on a skull-emblazed
T-shirt his dead son had bought for him in a street market (whaaaa???).
Castle picks it up and turns to a fisherman who nods and tells him, "Go
with God". "God's gonna sit this one out."

See, that was a pretty so-bad-it's-good one-liner there, but it needs to
be said in a big voice and a big accent. Think about it: Schwarzenegger,
Stallone, Dolph Lundgren... Big voices, big accents. Thomas Jane's a
decent actor, but he sounds like a Maryland real estate agent. The black
dye-job they did on his naturally blonde hair looks awful and while he
clearly got into shape for the role, this is not comic book musculature
in any way; Jane's so-called Punisher couldn't vigilante his way out of
a paper bag.

Then you've got the supporting players... There are no words... You have
NO idea how lousy they are. Ok, so Castle shacks up in a decrepit
tenement building in Tampa to prepare his revenge and chug Wild Turkey
while crying over pictures of his folks. That's too heavy, I guess, so
the movie gives him a trio of WACKY! neighbors straight out of a sitcom.
You've got Mr. Bumpo (John Pinette), a lard-ass in a Hawaiian face who's
always eating, Spacker Dave (Ben Foster), a video-game playing slacker
with lotsa piercings, and Joan 'the mouse' (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos), a
waitress who attracts asshole boyfriends.

Then you've got the bad guys, a bunch of Miami Vice henchmen who look
like Sears catalogue models; I mean, these are clearly not actors, not
with such uniformly wooden delivery! As for Travolta's coiffed,
pipe-smoking, hissy tantrum-throwing villain... Again, no words can do
justice to all the little ways in which he's lame. If he's given a worse
performance than this, I haven't seen it (and I've seen Perfect!).

There's a fight with The Russian (Kevin Nash) that's nicely comic book
and some potentially cool Joel Silver-style shoot-outs near the end, but
you can't even enjoy those few bits of gratuitous ultraviolence and
excessive mayhem properly because Hensleigh keeps cutting to stupid crap
(Mr. Bumpo singing opera, etc.), the models playing the bad guys can't
even convincingly die and everything is unimaginatively shot. Worse, we
never care about anyone in the film, not even the Punisher. We don't
believe in his grief, and we don't believe that he's got the balls to do
anything about it. Seriously, Thomas Jane's done good work in the past,
but he's spectacularly miscast here.

I miss Dolph Lundgren.

Pahreyia · Post by **Pahreyia** » April 16, 2004, 3:51 pm

Hrm.. Well, the commercials looked good. KBv2 it is.

Siji · Post by **Siji** » April 16, 2004, 4:14 pm

I'm still looking forward to seeing Punisher.

The people I went to see KB1 with fell asleep in the movie, multiple times. I have yet to see what the big deal is with the movie. Quinten just isn't that 'brilliant' to me. I'll wait for dvd for KB2.

And for the record, no movie Dolph Lundgren has ever been in has been much better than "pretty sucky".

Kwonryu DragonFist · Post by **Kwonryu DragonFist** » April 17, 2004, 4:15 am

ROCKY IV!

Ivan Drago says to Rocky

I will break you!

Jice Virago · Post by **Jice Virago** » April 17, 2004, 5:12 am

No way dude. He was the bomb as He Man.

m4yh3m · Post by **m4yh3m** » April 17, 2004, 7:56 am

I have no idea who wrote this movie or who directed it but it looks like a steaming pile to me. Casting Dave Chapelle as the Punisher and letting him 'keep it real' would have been more menacing than the assclown they picked as the new Punisher and Barbarino as the bad guy? Quentin may have been able to make that work but it hasn't since.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » April 17, 2004, 12:06 pm

I thought the Punisher was a lame comicbook character so the movie had little chance of impressing me. After seeing a preview for this movie, how could anyone not see that it was going to suck?

As for KB2. The first one was so so. Pulp Fiction was great. It's all downhill from there although that doesn't mean it's horrible.

Shanter · Post by **Shanter** » April 18, 2004, 2:56 am

It sucks

Fairweather Pure · Post by **Fairweather Pure** » April 18, 2004, 10:54 pm

This reincarnation of the Punisher is best described as a terrible movie with momments of greatness.

Too many parts made me say to myself "That right there is why I knew this movie would suck". However, the redeeming qualities were quite good. The entire ending and how Frank Castle set things up and revield everything to the bad guy was one of the best payoffs in any action movie I have seen. Furthermore, the violence was more graphic than I expected.

All in all, I would consider the Punisher yet another opportunity lost in terms of comic book to movie translation. Oh well, at least we still have X-men and Spiderman.

5.5 out of 10

Kluden · Post by **Kluden** » April 19, 2004, 10:46 am

I would have to agree...the whole set 'em up, and knock 'em down was the best, and most redeaming part, of this movie.

I went and saw it with low expectations, but I happen to be a big fan of the punisher story line.

If you take out his "apartment neighbors", then the movie would have been great. Their comic relief really is the downfall of the movie.

I mean honestly, I don't think anyone of a proper thinking mind would go into the theatre thinking this was gonna be an oscar worthy movie. If you go in with less than high expectations, and you go in knowing this movie is an action movie, you will not be disapointed.

The script is weak, but the action scenes are well done. Couple that with ultra loud speakers, and the gun shots are sickeningly real.

Also, I would just like to add, the "title intro" is one of the coolest I've ever scene. I really dug the bullet shots with shells, and the smoke kinda of melting across the screen to be the backdrops for the beginning credits...very cool idea.

And lastly, they played the Spiderman 2 trailer...and dear god does that movie look insane!

Vailex Darkfury · Post by **Vailex Darkfury** » April 19, 2004, 11:55 am

Good thing I didnt go see this movie over the weekend. I have these same feelings for Hellboy.

Dregor Thule · Post by **Dregor Thule** » April 19, 2004, 1:09 pm

Hellboy was good. It was entertainment, not great movie making, but it was done well. Good portrayal of the characters, nice effects work, and a passable plot.

Trek · Post by **Trek** » April 19, 2004, 1:15 pm

Yes Hellboy was worth watching. It will be a long time before I see Punisher on Video - the dollah shelf

Vailex Darkfury · Post by **Vailex Darkfury** » April 19, 2004, 2:14 pm

Dregor Thule wrote:Hellboy was good. It was entertainment, not great movie making, but it was done well. Good portrayal of the characters, nice effects work, and a passable plot.

eh what can I say. I had the same feeling right when I walked out of the movie but reflecting on it now I like it less. The storyline wasnt all that great and the ending was a let down.

Waran · Post by **Waran** » April 19, 2004, 5:53 pm

Agree with the apartment dwellers should have been gone suggestion. During our viewing (Which I got in for free thx connections), one guy shouted out after a comedic exchange to the Theatre "I didn't know this movie was supposed to be funny" to which someone replied "It is" and "Why don't you shut the hell up"

Ahhh feel teh love!

It was ok, but nothing stellar. Rebecca Romijn getting naked would have saved the movie

Siji · Post by **Siji** » April 20, 2004, 8:58 pm

Dregor Thule wrote:Hellboy was good. It was entertainment, not great movie making, but it was done well. Good portrayal of the characters, nice effects work, and a passable plot.

Unfortunately it was really drawn out and I kept waiting for it to be over. The death of 'father' was very underplayed as well. "Dang, dad is dead. Guess I'll sulk for a few days. Ok, done. Let's have jokes again." The only time I found myself caring for any of the characters was when fish boy was getting pounced on under water. But having bad imitations of Alien as the bad guy(s) was lame.