The Punisher

saw that yesterday, a great flick IMO. two questions about it.

1. did you like it?

2. was what he did really "punishment" or vengence?

It was vengeance , but you cant call his comic the vengeancer. Can you? :wink:

1) I assume you're talking about the 2004 version with John Travolta as the villain, and not the dire 1989 Dolph Lundgren film.

The 2004 one was merely vacuous and empty, the lead actor well-chosen for the role in that he could manage the emotional inner-deadness of a traumatised survivor simply by the natural expression of his face (which doesn't twitch a single muscle throughout the film), Travolta must have needed the money to get involved with such a flick, the action was very action-ey but lacked the suddenness and dynamic speed in the cinematography that truly intense action is made of - it was more like watching two hours of made-for-TV movie violence, and the three geeks they introduced to make the hero seem more likeable by their getting to know him didn't work and kind of ruined the whole point of the Punisher-concept, which is that the capacity for feeling is extinct within him and that his unending project of murder and destruction is his way of maintaining inner momentum before he has to face his own devastation and inevitably kills himself - the character is supposed to be like a shark; he can't stop or he'll die, only its his own torment that will destroy him.

The 1989 one was just a piece-of-**** Dolph Lundgren movie, cheap and nasty, and of exactly the sort you'd expect from his corpus of work. He rode around the sewers on a motorcycle a lot, as I recall.

2) No, it was just vengeance, but the character constructs a rationale for himself, a routine of dogma, that keeps him directed, justifies his actions and lifestyle to himself, and saves him from suicide. He'd like to think he's the living incarnation of society's communal authority to condemn those who break its rules, not really a man any more (because real people have emotions) - he's a function. But it's ********.

He's not a 'Punisher' , he's just a ****** off crazy man...well...a really good trained, combat hardened ****** off crazy man

I liked it. I've watched it a couple times. He didn't really punish anyone, it was more of vengence, cool vengence.

Castle in the movie was not the Castle from the comics. In the film, he messed around way too much doing research and recon about how best to make Howard suffer, in the comics he would normally just put a bullet in his target's brain and move on to the next one. That changed his whole thing from punishment to vengeance.

They are in the script writing process for a sequel, btw. I've heard bits and pieces from reviews and it sounds like we are going to get a film that is more in the style of Garth Ennis, with some memorable scenes from his comics being shot for the film. I heard it opens with the much loved Don Cesare assassination, followed by the M60 + claymore mines massacre of all the mafiosos who were celebrating the Don's b-day. Nothing is final, though, and the script is still being written.

Heres some fan altered posters for the punisher 2;

Originally Posted by Sam

Castle in the movie was not the Castle from the comics. In the film, he messed around way too much doing research and recon about how best to make Howard suffer, in the comics he would normally just put a bullet in his target's brain and move on to the next one. That changed his whole thing from punishment to vengeance.

Actually, just killing them would kinda cut the story short and in fact would be mere vengeance. What he did in the movie though, was use an actual plan, make Saint kill his best friend and wife and thereby punish him.
However, there is really no sense in asking whether it was vengeance or punishment as these two things don't exactly exclude themselves. I mean, you can punish someone out of vengeance and that's what Castle did. Since he's had his vengeance now, he can go on with the pure punishing in the sequel.

The movie was ok. My favorite part was the Russian played by Kevin Nash. That was a fun fight.

It was vengeance. Perhaps in the sequel he will evolve his methods into punishment and not vengeance. I am not holding my hopes to high.