It's getting harder and harder to find good action movies today. I admire The Punisher for its great action sequences, but I don't feel it has the greatest story to back it up. The acting was good enough to make everything convincing, but by the end it feels like low-rent Shakespeare, or something.
I think the general rule of a movie like this, where the main character loses his family, is that he always has to be exceedingly, exceedingly happy. He strolls along the beach with his wife, she talks about how blessed they are, he has a heart-to-heart with his son, his dad makes a big speech about how much he loves every single person present. Stuff like that. We know what's going to happen (everyone before seeing the movie must have read the synopsis or seen the preview!), so it's almost a bit sadistic to linger around at the beginning so much. But no matter. Once the plot gets moving, some great action ensues.
That's the best part of the movie, as I said. There are some truly awesome action scenes that aren't swamped with CGI and aren't too flashy. I thought the scene with The Russian was just pure brilliance. What an excellent and offbeat sequence that was. Definitely my favourite scene in the movie.
I've never read any of the Punisher comics so I really just see this as an action movie, not a comic-book adaptation. I know the movie doesn't promise to be a light-hearted romp or anything, but it was kind of off-putting to have such a cool action movie mixed with such a miserable, gloomy atmosphere. It's hard to cheer for a hero when he's drunk and on the verge of suicide through most of the movie. All this considered, it does a damn good job of it anyway. Thom Jane is perfect in the role and John Travolta keeps up his practice as the slimy villain character.
This is no doubt a flawed movie, there are some things that just don't make too much sense (I won't bother getting into them), and it's certainly not the kind of movie you want to take your grandmother to, but in a generation devoid of Stallones and Shwarzeneggers, this was a small comeback for the action film, and carries some hope for future action films, and this is, quite indeed, a run-on sentence, but I refuse to edit. Goodnight.
My rating 7/10
I think the general rule of a movie like this, where the main character loses his family, is that he always has to be exceedingly, exceedingly happy. He strolls along the beach with his wife, she talks about how blessed they are, he has a heart-to-heart with his son, his dad makes a big speech about how much he loves every single person present. Stuff like that. We know what's going to happen (everyone before seeing the movie must have read the synopsis or seen the preview!), so it's almost a bit sadistic to linger around at the beginning so much. But no matter. Once the plot gets moving, some great action ensues.
That's the best part of the movie, as I said. There are some truly awesome action scenes that aren't swamped with CGI and aren't too flashy. I thought the scene with The Russian was just pure brilliance. What an excellent and offbeat sequence that was. Definitely my favourite scene in the movie.
I've never read any of the Punisher comics so I really just see this as an action movie, not a comic-book adaptation. I know the movie doesn't promise to be a light-hearted romp or anything, but it was kind of off-putting to have such a cool action movie mixed with such a miserable, gloomy atmosphere. It's hard to cheer for a hero when he's drunk and on the verge of suicide through most of the movie. All this considered, it does a damn good job of it anyway. Thom Jane is perfect in the role and John Travolta keeps up his practice as the slimy villain character.
This is no doubt a flawed movie, there are some things that just don't make too much sense (I won't bother getting into them), and it's certainly not the kind of movie you want to take your grandmother to, but in a generation devoid of Stallones and Shwarzeneggers, this was a small comeback for the action film, and carries some hope for future action films, and this is, quite indeed, a run-on sentence, but I refuse to edit. Goodnight.
My rating 7/10