Watching “The Punisher” is punishment enough

April 28, 2008

I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I keep watching a bunch of bad movies - they’re like a bad car accident. You can’t do anything BUT turn and watch.

This past weekend, The Punisher was on TV broadcasted on FX. It wasn’t the old version of The Punisher but the new one where John Travolta plays a bad guy named Howard (what the hell? I don’t remember any bad guy named Howard in the Punisher comic strip) and I think Thomas Jane played the title role of Frank Castle. The basics of the movie held true to form the background of Frank Castle, but the character in the movie was a pansy compared to the comic strip. There was hardly any death…just a lot of things blowing up - things meaning boats, boxes, buildings, cars, but hardly any death and mayhem. I think you see a lot more of John Travolta than you do of Thomas Jane and the one who winds up killing a bunch of the main characters is John Travolta himself?!?

The ending is rather pathetic too. Sure, right before the ending is pretty cool with Frank Castle killing a bunch of people - perhaps the only true sign of gore and violence throughout the movie, but ultimately it truly jumps off the deep end with John Travolta being shot, tied to his limo by his ankle which Thomas Jane uses to end Travolta’s life by releasing the parking brake and it careens into a parking lot that Jane had planted with explosives? Is this really a good way to kill a guy? The only thing cool about it is that the explosion formed a flaming skull - which is the Punisher’s logo…the skull…

I’ll admit that I watched this movie a couple of times over the weekend simply because there was nothing else good on TV! However, also in my defense, I’ve never seen the entire movie, just various segments, but that was good enough for me. Anything else would have been unnecessary torture.

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