Well, it was worth a dollar fifty.

http://www.punisherthemovie.com/
"The Punisher" is a long, dark slog through grim revenge. Unlike most movies based on comic book heroes, it doesn't contain the glimmer of a smile, and its hero is a depressed alcoholic -- well he might be, since his entire family, including wife, child, father and even distant cousins -- has been massacred before his eyes. As he seeks vengeance, he makes the Charles Bronson character in the movie "Death Wish" look relatively cheerful and well-adjusted.

This from Roger Ebert.

Oddly enough, I find myself in agreement with Ebert most of the time, although he reaches his conclusions after listing reasons that aren't necessarily mine.

Now, this movie wasn't bad. It just wasn't good, either. It suffered, as Hollywood movies nearly always do, from the syndrome that causes screenwriters to change elements of the original source material for no reason whatsoever.

For example:
In the original comic book, "The Punisher," Frank Castle was a cop, and former Marine, whose wife and son were killed by accident in a car bomb meant for him, by the New York Mafia.
In the movie, he's an FBI agent and former "Delta Force" counter-terrorist operative, whose whole family out to the cousins and so forth, about 30 in all, were killed on purpose by hitmen sent by a gentleman named Howard Saint, whose wife asked for their deaths as a gift. This, of course, all takes place in Tampa, Florida, rather than up north.

Never at any point did they attempt to justify these changes; but let's rise above that and move on to the meat of the movie itself.

It suffered greatly from being cheesy. Had they attempted to play it with less comedy, and more as a straight actioner, it would have been both a better movie, and more true to its character's roots. For example, Mr. Saint hires an assassin to come and kill Castle, and the assassin first comes into the diner where Castle is eating and plays him a song on his guitar, and then talks smack to him.

I told my fiancee, "Hey, look, honey, they watched El Mariachi too!" It was incredibly difficult not to laugh out loud at the overacted melodrama present in what was obviously meant as a serious scene, full of menace...

Heh.

There were good moments, the fight between Castle and "the Russian" was so over-the-top it was utterly amusing, and the sheer number of walls that got destroyed was really impressive.

One bit I particularly liked was the scene in which Castle "tortures" one of the lower-echelon hoods that work for Saint by showing him a blowtorch, and then poking him in the back with a popsicle. FYI, that bit can be found in Punisher: War Zone, issue #2. Oddly, let's-change-itism struck again; in the comic, the hood's name was Mickey; in the movie it's Nicky. Tell me, someone, why THAT was actually necessary.

The movie was fun, even in places where the makers clearly didn't intend for it to be, and as such was definitely worth $1.50 a ticket. I'm fairly glad we didn't attempt to see it in a first-run theater for $8.

Oh, Hollywood? Are you listening? If you advertise a soundtrack for a movie with songs by Drowning Pool, you oughta do the band the courtesy of at least having their song appear in the movie. Especially since the one real hit single Drowning Pool has had, "Bodies," is probably the most appropriate music you could have found for this movie. Well, with the possible exception of Dope's "Die, Motherf*****, Die."