The Punisher

Release Date: April 25, 1991

Watch Date: July 9, 2025

“Frank Castle is a police officer whose family was murdered by a car bomb planted by the Mob. Since many believed he died in the explosion, Castle had to disappear from view. He created his own living quarters in the sewer beneath the streets of town and avenged his family’s death by killing 125 criminals over the next five years. Castle’s former partner, Jake Berkowitz, believes Castle is alive and is in fact the motorcycle-riding avenger who has been nicknamed THE PUNISHER. In the meantime, Castle has single-handedly weakened organized crime in this city, thereby making vulnerable the man responsible for the Castle family hit: Gianni Franco. When Franco’s innocent son is kidnapped by a rival mob, the Japanese Yakuza, Castle finds himself in the ironic position of helping a man he’d like to kill.”

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Okay, so we’re having some trouble finding time to watch movies right now. Life, am I right? But we kept talking about how excited we were for “Avengers August”. And sometimes, especially on long projects, you’ve got to cut yourself some slack and do the fun thing when you’re in a rut.

So we’re calling it “Justice July”. And we’re starting with ‘The Punisher’.

I still don’t like the Punisher as a hero, an antihero? I don’t like him. At least in movies he’s just a murder machine, but with none of the personality of, say, a Deadpool. So it’s hard to get behind his cause or like him in any way? And I say that thinking that Dolph Lundgren played him very well, as well as the Punisher can be played. Instead you have to try and relate to the villains, which are the only characters which show any personality, or the detectives looking for him. But both the villains and the detectives have decided to play it pretty shallow too, so this movie in particular it’s hard to relate, and attach, to anyone.

I don’t love a movie where children are threatened, or about to be sold in to slavery. Maybe I’m just sensitive right now, but I just found it to be extremely upsetting. Possibly the subject of child slavery wasn’t as touchy back in the late 80s/early 90s, but it feels a little bit more on the forefront, at least to my mind.

But as a mindless movie filled with gratuitous violence, it’s pretty good. It’s a campy late 80s action movie, which is kind of fun. There’s ninjas. The ninjas are on slides. It’s predictable, but it’s not predictable in a way that takes away from the enjoyment of it, at least if you feel like watching a man go on a mindless killing spree, or at least riff a man going on a mindless killing spree.

With this movie, at least, our MCU marathon has finally left the 80s and 90s and we’re sticking solidly in the modern MCU era, which I’m looking forward to. Though I’m sure there’s still plenty of terrible things to look forward to.