Reviewed by: Kris

Directed by: Jonathan Hensleigh

Produced by: Avi Arad & Gale Anne Hurd

Cast: Thomas Jane, John Travolta, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Laura Elena Harring, & Samantha Mathis

Action/Adventure and Crime/Gangster 2 hrs. 04 min. Frank Castle (Thomas Jane) is a man who has seen too much death in his life, first as a Delta Force Op and later as an FBI special agent. He has managed to beat considerable odds, and is finally moving out of the field and into a normal life with his wife and son. On his final assignment, Castle plays his undercover role perfectly, but the operation spins out of control. This places the FBI on the wrong side of Tampa businessman Howard Saint (John Travolta) and his glamorous wife Livia (Laura Harring). Notwithstanding their glossy social profile, the Saints are no genteel Florida couple; behind their copious wealth are violent beginnings, underworld ties – and a chilling capacity for brutality. Castle’s worst nightmare is about to come true, as Howard Saint and his lieutenants unleash hell at the Castle family reunion. But Castle, to his everlasting torment, survives. Drawing upon all he has learned in 20 years, Castle sets in motion a brilliant plan to punish the murderers. He takes up residence among in a dilapidated tenement building on Tampa’s industrial waterfront, where his fellow tenants include Joan (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos), a waitress at a nearby diner who is trying to put her life back on track. Castle’s neighbors become his last link to the idea of human community and warmth. It is this makeshift family – forgotten men and women with no one to protect them - who enable Castle to find the one thing he least expects: redemption.

I was really excited to see The Punisher. I thought the previews made it look like a decent adaptation, and I wasn’t disappointed. This is a movie that lives up to expectations, but it doesn’t extend beyond that. The Punisher is as good as I expected, but not any better than that. I liked The Punisher, but it isn’t one of my favorite films and it certainly isn’t going to be one of the best ones I see this year. I had never read the comic book, but I thought that this movie looked pretty cool. I saw it as different than the other comic book adaptations because the character is like a real person; he isn’t a superhero like Batman or The Hulk. Frank Castle is just an ordinary man whose life has been struck by tragedy, and he’s ready to strike back.

Thomas Jane is fitting in the part of Frank Castle. I believed what I saw on screen. Jane was able to portray the happiness, grief, and indifference of Frank Castle. I believed what Castle was saying because it was filled with genuine emotion, even though Jane has never been through what Castle was put through in the film. That is the gift of an actor; to be able to depict something that he or she has never experienced and to make it believable.

This is a semi-violent film. It’s not violence of the type that we saw in Kill Bill Vol. 1, so it isn’t too hard to watch the violence while it was happening. The one part in the film that I couldn’t watch was when earrings are being torn out of one of the character’s face. I couldn’t watch that because it’s something that could happen to me, and things like that are always hard for me to watch. Other than that, there weren’t many scenes that were difficult to watch.

Some of the scenes were shot very well. My favorite is a scene near the end when there are multiple explosions. The way that it was shot is extraordinary. The audience gets to see the explosions from above, so it looks amazing. I wish there were more scenes like that in the film, but there weren’t many.

Overall this is a decent film. It certainly isn’t the best adaptation film I have seen recently, but it isn’t the worst either. It is one of the better ones that have been released in the last few years, and it’s at least worth renting when it’s available.