I think everybody can agree on one thing here, this is a very loose adaptation of the Marvel comic book character. There is no skull logo to be seen, Castle goes around everywhere on that loud bike, the origins are all wrong and they basically made him into some kind of revenge stricken Hell's Angel looking leather clad biker.
Initial impression is bad as the film kicks off, just look at those opening credits! is this a film from 89 or 79?? The whole sequence looks like some kind of shitty US TV cop serial, half expect Starsky's Gran Torino to roll across the screen sheesh!
The film is a typical violent trashy 80's action flick no doubt. If you take a step back and look at this flick you could easily remove the Punisher character from the plot and nothing would change. You could then stick in any muscle bound character played by any muscle bound star and the film would still work, it would still deliver. Basically its just a run of the mill action vehicle that just happens to have the Punisher as the main character.
Now don't get me wrong this isn't a bad thing, end of the day this film is a solid riot of action that will please any 80's buff. The violence is strong, brutal and not cut much, you see it all really. Sure its totally stupid and highly unrealistic but it still takes it self seriously making it more enjoyable. The film has a really nice balance between realism and heavy realism, its not Nolan realistic, its not an 'Expendables' parody/spoof and its not 'Batman n Robin' camp/silliness. You can have a lot of fun with the film if you don't think too much into it yet its still realistic enough to satisfy...if you don't think too much into it.
Of course there are some things which simply don't make sense, the bike Castle uses is hardly much for stealth is it, plus he rides around all tooled up completely in black, errr....stealth/hidden identity much Mr Castle? It also always amused me how they applied makeup on Dolph, he looks so pale and ill throughout this film. Trying to capture the appearance of a dark haired hairy man didn't really work. His stubble line keeps getting washed off, you can see it on his earlobes at times and when its pasted on in all its glory it looks like a dirty big smudge across his face.
But as far as the character I think Dolph does really well and gives us a nice muted sinister Punisher. A man of little words but big on action, the more I think about it the more I liked his performance (lack of acting skills in one of his first films aside). He does look good, his outfit is bland but effective (the skull logo does give you away somewhat), he looks like he can pull off the heists he sets out to do, he fights well and can handle the weapons. Its Rambo in a black outfit basically.
The bad guys weren't quite as well thought up in my opinion, plenty of suit wearing thugs to gun down sure but no one stood out. I quite liked the Yakuza direction, the female boss and her sexy kick boxing female assistant, kinda corny but fun. The finale set in a traditional washitsu filled with Shōji doors was well done, the lighting getting knocked out gave it the atmosphere.
I think the film overall is actually a perfect comic book adaptation that is pretty gritty, quite dark and highly exciting with real action, no over the top CGI. The obvious lack of budget, good locations and screen busting stunts actually gives the film a much better feel, much more seedy, much more grim, one of those things that just works and can't really be recreated, a happy accident.
If you like masses of henchmen getting killed as an invincible one man army runs around with unlimited ammo 'Commando' style, whilst the bad guys empty clip after clip in his direction hitting everything but their intended target...then this film could well be for you.
7/10
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