Now is it a good movie? Oh God no.
The dialogue is ridiculous, the acting goes from over the top to subdued. The story is oddly simplistic and yet needlessly drawn out.
And the interactions between the Punisher and the little girl that he's kind of protecting is just ridiculous. I think she's supposed to be timid or shy but the way her character acts she comes off like she has some form of light autism or some other mental disability.
Although you'd be hard-pressed to debate her mental problems considering our main villain ''Jigsaw'' and his literally incarcerated brother whose name was; ''Boxcar James?'' Or something ridiculous like that. I actually can't remember.
That might be the biggest fault of the movie. None of the characters are rememberable. There's the guy who's playing Jigsaw and he's kind of fun and over the top. One minute he's trying to be Jack Nicholson as the Joker and the other minute he's trying to be the Joker from The Dark Knight.
The guy that plays the Punisher is okay. He comes off as a bit of an oddball and in certain shots he looks a little doughy. Still not a bad thing, he's performance is solid enough and he plays his character straight without being overly serious. Which makes them entertaining to watch. Especially given all the ridiculous over the top fight scenes that happen throughout the film.
This film reminds me an awful lot of the 89 Batman. It exists in the same framework, where it's dark and broody but also silly and a bit camp. It works really well for the Punisher. At least in the movies anyways.
Trying to do a solid brooding Frank Castle just doesn't work if you want to have interesting and silly characters. Or if you want to have a memorable film.
I'm sure somebody out there could make a very simple Punisher movie where he's just fighting average everyday mobsters, a bunch of street hoodlums or corrupted police officers. In fact there's probably a lot of powerful imagery and social commentary that could come out of such a film. But nobody is willing to take a chance for fear of mediocrity. Or possibly a protest from a group of people who find your commentary offencive.
So you lean into the more wacky aspects of the Punisher Universe. Where he interacts with zany silly characters like the Jigsaw.
The character jigsaw has a lot in common with Two-Face from the Batman Universe. Both of them were kind of created by the very vigilante men who were trying to stop them in the first place*. In this case The Punisher pushing this random mom stare into a bottle crushing machine and then turning it on to kill him.
Also Newman is in this movie! Or if you want to use his real name Wayne Knight. He plays this dude who gives the Punisher weapons.
It'd be nice to see him in a movie where he didn't die. But I guess ever since Jurassic Park that just can't happen. You put Newman in your film you've got to kill him.
So we have three major stories here. We have the Punisher doing his thing where he's hunting down random goons and later at one part is trying to atone for the death of an FBI agent he accidentally killed while attacking some random Warehouse.
We have Jigsaw and his little Posse crew running around causing problems and hunting Down The Punisher. Then we have Colin Salmon who's also kind of looking for The Punisher but whose story is so overlooked that he's kind of pointless.
He has one real good scene in the entire movie where he's helping Frank Castle in the hostage situation inside a house but beyond that there's nothing really for him to be doing here.
The worst part about all that is I think his story could have been the strongest, if it was just given a little more time and effort. Because he's the only person that has a real goal. Jigsaw is just a random crazy man who wants to conquer the city and Frank is a one note man who wants to kill Jigsaw. But Colin Salmon character wants to rid the city of crime through the police system. And actually bring some order into the world.
Of course if we did focus on him too much than the Punisher part of the story would have suffered and this would have just been another generic movie that happens to have the Punisher in it.
And if that happened then Frank Castle would become a secondary character in his own movie.
If the acting and actual script was any better I would have made an argument for having a more developed relationship between Frank and The Grieving mother with her child. Maybe a sit-down conversation or some genuine interaction, where Frank thinks he might be able to rekindle his old family values.
So looking back at everything I just said it really makes it look like I just liked this movie. And I want to make it really clear, I don't. I think this was a perfectly acceptable fun movie. Despite all the problems it spacing was relatively good and it was entertaining to watch the entire time. It's just dumb fun. And sometimes that's all you need. Especially if you're dealing with something like The Punisher. This movie was everything it needed to be.
And at the end of the day it's proof that you can make a good Punisher movie. Just remember that a good Punisher movie doesn't generally mean a good film.
The best thing about this movie besides the mildly enjoyable fight scenes would have to be the awful dialogue some of these characters have with each other. Especially with Jigsaw on his psychopath brother. They are just giving the most ridiculously dumb things to say in this film. And it's done so poorly that it's comedic and makes the film all that much more enjoyable.
So I'm pretty sure I'm overthinking this, but I found it incredibly ironic and kind of satisfying that the only ethnic gang to survive at the end of this movie was the Russian one. Not only did The Punisher not go after them, but they were actually utilized to help take down the other gangs. I kind of wonder if this was in response both to The Punisher comic and to the 2004 film where the biggest villain of the whole movie was one big buff Russian dude who the Punisher had to kill.
There's also a lot of fart metal** in this movie. And it's one of the rare times where it oddly works, because the premise in the environment in which all these people or live is so dumb and self aware of its stupidity that they just decide to have fun with it.
*Jigsaw does lack the emotional connection that Too Faced had with Batman. For the Punisher has absolutely no relation with this guy whatsoever. He's not even link to the Mobsters who initially killed his family. He's just some dude.
** Fart metal is a term used for generic heavy metal music inserted into a film for quote ''bad ass'' effect. It's usually really dumb and corny and makes your movie feel incredibly dated. Also it's just horrible music most the time.
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