The Punisher Reviews
There's something to be said for letting a comic book adaptation operate at the level of a comic book, dispensing cheap laughs and ice-cold sadism.
Time Out
Top CriticUltimately, Frank's victim -to-vigilante transformation is so morally unexplored it's emotionally alienating.
There isn't a moment in The Punisher that isn't borrowed or stolen from another movie.
Mismanages its greatest asset: an unusual embarrassment of camp riches.
Gets us lost early in the first half-hour and never succeeds in completely luring us in.
The pleasure we take in [the Punisher's] inability to resist his basest instincts is like taking a bite of deliciously dark chocolate: probably bad for us, definitely bitter, but still sweet and stimulating.
The graphic nature of the violence that makes The Punisher hard to recommend without serious caveats.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
This is an improvement over the unspeakable 1989 Punisher with Dolph Lundgren, but too often just seems like an unintentional parody.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
An entertaining, if silly, film adaptation of the Marvel comic.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
While Hensleigh's film is faithful to its source, quoting it freely, it feels more like a flesh-and-blood Peckinpah movie than another filmed comic.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
For those who can stomach two hours of brain-dead brutality, the film has more laughs than most comedies.
Tom Jane is a great-looking Punisher, darkly handsome and chiseled, even if the movie goes nowhere with the character.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
An uneven yet workable mix of deft humor, slam-bang action and colorful pulp-novel punch.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
A flatline affair from beginning to end, The Punisher is painfully dull, offering no characters, actions, scenes or special effects of note.
| Original Score: D
Hensleigh, co-writer with Michael France, makes the paint-by-numbers of organized-crime movies look fresh by tapping good actors and sleek camera work.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
The Punisher is so grim and cheerless, you wonder if even its hero gets any satisfaction from his accomplishments.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
The Punisher doesn't rise to the top of an ever-growing, comic-book movie heap.
| Original Score: C
An overemphatic revenge fantasy devoid of even a trace of excitement or wit.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
This whole movie seems to be a cry for help -- or I should say, punishment.
Thomas Jane is just wooden and buff enough to pull off the role.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Travolta is terrific as a bad guy, making Saint almost sympathetic. His co-stars however, flounder in a sea of bad lines, with poor Romijn-Stamos getting stuck with the worst.
| Original Score: 2/4
Pic plays like a paint-by-numbers pilot for bygone basic-cable teleseries.
Trashy and disturbingly violent yet fairly zippy and amusingly cast.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
A sickeningly manipulative, by-the-numbers revenge movie.
Its lack of subtlety is clearly a point of pride, and Mr. Hensleigh's flat-footed, hard-punching style has a blunt ferocity that makes Kill Bill look like In the Bedroom.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
For an action movie written and directed by a guy who has written a lot of lively flicks, The Punisher is surprisingly inactive, full of long, slow stretches punctuated by perfunctory car chases, shoot-outs and-or fist fights.
Full Review
| Original Score: D+
A ridiculously violent revenge story with no redeeming value.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
By the end, the Punisher's greatest adversaries emerge as an unwelcome trio known as jokey, hokey and hammy.
No, The Punisher isn't pretty. But, like its low-rent superhero, it gets the job done and then some.
| Original Score: 2.5/4
For such a formulaic vigilante film, The Punisher has a far better cast than it deserves.
| Original Score: 2/4
[Hensleigh's] trying to pack in too much and the density clogs the narrative machinery.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
In this by-the-numbers payback melodrama, even the explosions seem half-hearted.
Full Review
| Original Score: .5/4
In a case study of how to screw up a simple, powerful revenge story, director Jonathan Hensleigh punishes audiences with an unbearably sluggish action movie that requires the word 'action' to be placed in quotes.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
The ad for it claims, The Punishment Begins April 16. And boy, does it. About 1 hour, 59 minutes worth of punishment.
Full Review
| Original Score: D
Think of what might happen if someone grafted parts of Batman and Robin onto The Crow, and you'll have an idea of how unpalatable The Punisher is.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
A moronically inept and tedious piece of death-wish trash.
Full Review
| Original Score: D-
Laudably exposes the dark core of the human heart.
| Original Score: 3/4
