Reaction & Review | The Punisher

Welcome, one and all, to "Tales of the Longbox" here on Reaction & Review. Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I'm gonna be checking out an action film from 1989. That movie is "The Punisher".

Now for those of you who don't follow me, way back in mid-December, I posted a preview banner for my "Tales of the Longbox" series. Which basically features a particular set of comics that mostly act as hints as to what movies I would be covering for the first couple of months. One of those comics that was on that banner was something involving the Punisher. And there are several movies I could've picked involving this character. Do I go with the 2004 movie starring Thomas Jane and John Travolta? Well, no. Because I've seen that movie at least a few times already. And unfortunately, the movie hasn't really aged all that well with repeat viewings. What about "Punisher: War Zone"? You know, the one that came out in 2008? Well again, I've seen it, so that movie's also out of the running.

It then leaves me with the only other option that's available to me that I haven't seen yet, which would be the 1989 movie starring Dolph Lundgren. And that right there raises a couple of red flags for me. For starters, the very fact that you'd cast a foreign actor playing a comic book character that's suppose to be an American, doesn't really sound right to me. That'd be like if you reversed roles with Sylvester Stallone in "Rocky IV", in which you would have Dolph Lundgren playing Rocky, while Stallone would play the foreign heel. It just doesn't sound right at all.

Now, I would probably ignore all that, expect we come to the other reason as to why I have an issue with this casting choice. You see, I have heard Dolph Lundgren's attempt at acting in films such as "Rocky IV" and "Universal Soldier". Now with "Rocky IV", it's not that big of an issue. Because he had very minimal dialogue to work with in that movie. And then I watched his performance in "Universal Soldier", and, oh my god, his acting in that movie was fucking terrible. And that's mostly because, unlike "Rocky IV", he had more dialogue in that movie, and well...let's just say that his acting was one of the many things that brought that movie down for me.

So, you can kinda guess as to where my stance is going into this movie. The very idea of Dolph Lundgren being the star of this thing leaves me with a little bit of dread. Now, I don't know. Maybe Lundgren will actually surprise me, and actually turn in a decent performance here. I have strong doubts about that, but who knows? Stranger things have happened before. So, the only way I'm gonna find out if this movie is any good at all, is if I shut up, and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "The Punisher".

16 minutes later

Guys, I understand it's very early in this movie, but I feel like I need to mention this now. The acting from almost the entire cast has been pretty good...except for Dolph Lundgren as Frank Castle. Granted, I kinda expected his acting to be bad, but I wasn't expecting it to be THIS fucking bad. And I'm probably gonna have to get use to his horrible acting for the next hour and 10 minutes or so. This might be a painful experience, guys.

20 minutes later

You know, guys, you would think that an action scene involving the Punisher would be really cool and interesting. But so far, it really hasn't been either one of those things. I'm genuinely hoping that it will get interesting sooner rather than later. But as of right now, I'm not really sure if it's going to.

20 minutes later

Are these idiots ACTUALLY trying to ram a bus off with their tiny ass cars? What fucking sense does that even make?! I could maybe understand if they were driving something like pick-up trucks, then MAYBE they would have a slightly better chance at it. But to have them ram a bus with nothing except their tiny ass cars is fucking retarded on levels that I didn't think were even possible. I swear to God, this movie is getting stupider with each passing minute, and I still got more than half an hour of this shit to go! This is gonna suck, guys.

19 minutes later

You know, guys, I would probably care more about this final act of the movie in which they're trying to save Franco's son, if most of this entire sequence wasn't filmed with this red lighting. It's almost getting very distracting, and it's kinda making this final act a little bit hard to watch. Just thought I'd share that with you guys, since this movie hasn't given me a whole lot to work with.

The Review

Well, guys, that was "The Punisher". And unfortunately, my copy of the movie kinda crapped itself out towards the end credits. But hey, at least it got there enough to where I can see the credits start to roll, so I can go ahead and shut it off now...OK. Jesus Christ, that was torturous to get through. So...what the hell to even start with? I guess I was expecting a lot better from this movie, but...no. This movie really sucked.

Anyway, I guess I can start with the writing, as per usual with these reviews. And I will say that this movie is, pretty much, a straight-laced, plotless action movie. And for many people that are into those movies, you're gonna probably gonna end up loving this thing. And being that this thing came out in 1989, this movie lives up to being one of those last bastion of 80's action movies that's just there to exist as being a mindless action movie. So on that end, it succeeds on doing just that. Unfortunately, I'm not into a lot of those plotless action movies, with a few exceptions here and there. So this thing doesn't really work for me. Which is disappointing to say, because I actually think there was something here resembling a story that could've been great. Yes, buried beneath this movie's mindless action, there is something kinda resembling a story here that could've been expanded upon. And in the case of a good writer, they definitely could've pulled that off. Unfortunately, like I just stated, this movie decided to be just another plotless action film that's not really doing anything new or interesting. And I mean that in both story and it's action scenes, the latter in which I'll get into later.

But for now, I should probably talk about the writing itself for a bit. Now, you would think that since this movie was working with a comic book property, such as the Punisher, you would expect the Punisher to just lay waste to the people that murdered his family, and everybody that's involved with the criminal underworld. And he does just that, because we get told by a news report at the very beginning of the movie that the Punisher has laid waste to about 125 mobsters. In fact, because he has laid waste to so many of these mobsters, it leaves the crime family in shambles. And our kingpin, Franco, who is also responsible for killing Frank Castle's wife and kids, has to bring in whoever is left that hasn't been killed by the Punisher, and combine them together as one unit. Which then leads into the Yakuza getting involved, lead by our main villain Tanaka. She gives a proposition to Franco that he can still run the crime family, but she, and the Yakuza, will get to control their finances and interests. Which then later leads into them kidnapping the children of these mobsters, including Franco's son. That way, they can get what they want, so the mobsters would fall in line, and they won't have to worry about their children getting sold off into child trafficking. Which then gets the Punisher involved when a friend of his pleads with him to go save the children. And that's pretty much it for plot. Because there's really nothing else here in terms of conflict that's of any interest. Anything involving the two detectives trying to find Frank Castle's whereabouts doesn't really go anywhere, our characters are all flat and fucking lifeless, and that also includes the Punisher. I may not have read any of the Punisher comics, but I know that a lot people who have read them can tell you that he has more depth and likability to him than this fucking movie did. Even the other two Punisher movies I saw, at least, tried to give Frank Castle some kind of depth to him. Here though, not so much. It also doesn't help when you have him played by Dolph Lundgren, but I'll talk about that later when I get into the acting.

While I'm on the subject of the writing, there is something I hinted at earlier that I said could've worked, if the writer for this thing, Boaz Yakin, had taken advantage of early on. You see, as I mentioned earlier, the only bit of plot that we do have here is that Tanaka, the leader of the Yakuza, kidnaps the mobster's children to use as leverage against the mobsters. Otherwise, they would be used in her child trafficking scheme. Franco actually gets the idea to have the Punisher get involved, so that he and the Punisher can forge an alliance to get his son back. Here's the problem, though. He does this very late into the movie after the Punisher turns himself in after rescuing the other children that were kidnapped. And when I say very late, I mean he does this when there's only about a half an hour of movie left. And by that point, it just comes across as too little, too late. And there's very little conflict between the two characters. Now, here's what I would've done to fix this. I would've waited shortly after the mobsters children get kidnapped, then have Franco find a way to contact the Punisher early on. I would then have the Punisher refuse him the first few times, because why would you help a guy that was responsible for killing his own family? And I would have this continue, until Franco finds a way to use some kind of leverage in order to get the Punisher to listen to him. Which then leads me into ditching the subplot where the two detectives are trying to find Frank Castle's lair, and have detective Berkowitz be kidnapped. Mostly because he's the guy that use to be Frank Castle's partner in the police force. Use the detective as leverage, so that he and the Punisher can work together to save the children and his son. You see, that way, if you did this early on, you would have more of a conflict between the Punisher and Franco. Where one is just itching to kill the guy that ended up killing Frank Castle's family, while the other is just wanting to get his son back while not wanting to be controlled by Tanaka and her Yakuza. In fact, I would say the last 10 minutes of the movie has something very compelling going on that involves the Punisher, Franco, and his son. It probably would've been better if my copy of the movie actually properly worked towards the end, but what I did end up seeing actually does kinda work. And before anyone asks, my copy of the movie was perfectly fine, it was just the last 10 minutes that wanted to crap itself out for no actual reason.

Unfortunately, like I said, all of this happens very late into the movie. And before all that, it's just another case of the movie playing itself out like a bunch of other plotless action movies would. So the writing here is just not very good. It's not very good by plotless action movie standards, and what little is here isn't very well thought out either. Now, with that out of the way, let's get into the acting. I made no secret of this when I first mentioned it, but I feared that Dolph Lundgren was gonna be the worst part about this movie. And, lull and behold, he is totally the worst actor in this entire movie. I was expecting, maybe, he would kinda surprise me a bit by actually turning in an OK showing, but no, he totally lived up to my original standards of him being the lowest point of this movie. In fact, do you want to know how bad he really is in this movie? He is so bad that all of the child actors that were in this movie, turned in a better showing than Dolph-fucking-Lundgren! Mind you, most of the child actors in this movie weren't very good to begin with. However, in their cases, they had very little, to no dialogue to begin with. In Dolph Lundgren's case, though, he did have more dialogue in this movie. And he sucked royally. Every other actor in this movie, besides the child actors, all of them turned in better showings. And they basically had to carry this movie, because some pinhead over at New World Pictures thought it'd be a good idea to cast someone who can barely act, let alone be in the starring role for this movie. In fact, I think this movie proves, at least to me, that Dolph Lundgren should never be in a starring role for any movie. If you are dumb enough to cast him in a leading role, then at least make sure he doesn't have too much dialogue to work with. Otherwise, you get movies like this, in which he brings most of it down entirely. So yeah, the acting is pretty good, but most of it is brought down by Dolph Lundgren's lackluster performance.

I want to touch upon the action scenes next. Because since this thing is pretty much a plotless action movie, you would expect that to be one of the things that would hold this movie together. And I will say that if you're someone who likes seeing shit being blown up, or sequences where guns are just blazing left and right, or fight sequences that mostly happen towards the final act of the movie. If all of that interests you, then you're going to absolutely adore the action scenes in this movie. Mind you, none of it is great, or even memorable for that matter. But like I said earlier, the stuff that is here totally works for an action movie. And I will say that the fight choreography here is OK. Again, it's not really that memorable, but I do think that this is one of the few moments where Dolph Lundgren gets to shine. Because when he's not being hampered with speaking dialogue, he does get to kick ass when he needs to. And at the very least, it's not as poorly done as the shit I would see in other 80's action movies such as "The Ninja Mission" or "The Russian Ninja". Granted, that isn't really saying very much, but at least this movie has some decent action that fans of plotless action movies would like. Special effects here are decent, mostly in terms of the blood effects. The squib work for the guns is perfectly fine. Pyrotechnics are pretty good, also. So yeah, again, all of this works fine, especially for an action movie.

Camerawork here is pretty good. The lighting here is mostly fine, save for a majority of the final act, where it's mostly filmed with this red lighting. Now there is kind of a reason for this red lighting, but it didn't really enhance the movie in any way, it's just kind of an annoying lighting effect to try and make the fight scenes look 'cool' and 'intense'. However, most of the fight sequences during that point is just one and done, and any intense moments during the final act doesn't really last long, or is even interesting. That being said, the sound-mix here is mixed fine. And the score here is OK, too. None of it is gonna be memorable, but at least it's serviceable in doing it's job.

Ultimately, guys, when all is said and done, am I able to recommend "The Punisher"? Only if you are a fan of plotless actions movies. And if that is your thing, then go for it. You are probably going to end up loving this thing. However, for anybody else that's looking for more substance in their action movies, then hell no. This thing is not going to provide any real substance. It's mostly just a bland, boring, plotless action movie that doesn't really have much going for it. I would've said, maybe, if you were a fan of the comics, then I could possibly recommend a once-over. But I can't really do that, because there are two other Punisher movies out there that are better than this. They're not great by any stretch of the matter, but they are certainly better recommendations, at least, for a single viewing experience. This thing, on the other hand, is not worth that single viewing experience. Only fans of plotless action movies will love this thing. Myself, on the other hand, no. I am not going to give this piece of shit a second viewing. And considering that my copy decided to crap itself out towards the end, it makes this movie unwatchable. And the sooner I no longer have a copy of this thing around me, the better. Now...I'm gonna go and watch a better action movie. And the first thing that comes to my mind is "Escape From New York". I'm gonna go watch that next, because I want to watch a better 80's action movie that actually has more substance within it's plot. So, I'm gonna go do that next after I'm done putting this review together.

Anyway, guys, with that, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.