Cast: Thomas Jane, John Travolta, Will Patton, Roy Scheider, Rebecca Romijn, Laura Harring, Ben Foster
Based on the Marvel comic book, this action-adventure casts Jane as an ex-FBI agent who turns vigilante after the murder of his family at the hands of a crooked businessman (Travolta).
This rather standard B-movie vigilante revenge story is an excellent example of why the best comic-book adaptations involve actual superheroes with actual superpowers (i.e. those that can fly, spin webs, make things burn or freeze with their eyes etc...) It also helps when they have really good stories (see Spider Man), or really cool fight scenes (see Blade). Instead, The Punisher is more like Rambo with better reasons for killing all the bad guys:1. They brutally slaughtered his entire family2. The presence of the ever-annoying, hammed-up John Travolta. To banish all memory of the equally mediocre 1990 Dolph Lundgren version. The 2004 version of does admittedly possess remarkably higher production values, a decent action sequence or two, and some fantastically cheesy one-liners that almost make it a decent hangover movie. Until, that is, one realizes that the protagonist's credo/rationale for killing/punishment (not vengeance because that’s an emotional response) may have been co-opted by a certain administration...but, hell, just like the Punisher, we all know that certain types of bad guys require payback that’s a little bit beyond the law. Check the obituaries.
