A night of punishment

Okay so let me start this by saying I try to be a good guy, I help old people cross the street, give blood every other day and if you needed a kidney well I’m your guy, so for me today is going to be a bad day, why? Because I’m about to commit an act of sheer evil, I am going to force myself to watch all three of the punisher movies, this is how committed I am to all of you valuable readers, now just to make me an even worse person I’ve told the girl I’m seeing (let's call her carly because, well because I don't really want her to see this) to come round, now I’ve pretty much told her we're having a romantic evening and watching a movie, which is vaguely accurate, I’ve got a dinner from M & S, some wine and three punisher movies I’m going to review for a blogspot to surprise her with, how much more romance can one girl ask for than me and these three men?

Now the first film we're starting off with is the 1989 movie “The Punisher” (can I just quickly say I paid a fiver for this on VHS so someone owes me) starring Dolph Lundgren, do you remember him? No you probably don't huh, apparently he was in the expendables though, so well i guess there's always that, now i'm not going to lie, this film is amazing, it's like every action film made back in that decade, and like all of them it's perfect, i mean sure  punisher in this film knows kung fu and barely kills anyone with a gun, in fact thinking back i'm not sure he uses a gun throughout the whole film, and sure he doesn't have a skull on his t-shirt, he instead has a selection of jackets that i'm pretty sure even back then weren't exactly the height of fashion, and a plot that i'm pretty sure was made up in one day (okay so we put the punisher somewhere, fight scene, yakuza, fight scene, punisher win's) but the best part is his “sidekick” an old alcoholic called shake, who speaks almost entirely in rhyme,i really wish more of the modern marvel films would bring in sidekicks like this, i mean imagine Iron Man if Jim Rhodes only spoke in haiku's or Thor if he had a sidekick who talked in song lyrics, marvel if you're reading this get on it, honestly though watch this movie, it's the perfect amount of kitschy action and really bad one liners

After a brief fight with Carly (who is pretty much the best for not just walking out straight away) over the fact that apparently she brought some film called “Crazy, Stupid, Love” that she wanted to watch but does that film have the Punisher?, well it might do we never got round to watching it, but it probably doesn't, next up is “The Punisher” from 2004, now this movie is much more like the comic book Punisher than the 1989 version, but that doesn't make it half as good, the rough plot of this film is the same old backstory that every marvel fan knows, i mean exactly the same, only the main bad guy is the crime boss of..... wait for it, Tampa, Florida, now i don't know why but i find this as vaguely threatining as somone being the crime boss, of oh say i don't know Candy Kingdom, Land of Oooh, now add in to this the fact that the crime boss is played by John Travolta with what i can only guess is a wig made out of about 20 dead crows and all of a sudden this film feels like the punisher is trying to kill a kitten, a kitten with an army of bad guys sure, but still, it's a kitten, this is probably the one film where **spoiler, as if you care** near the end when Frank Castle is contemplating suicide, you kind of hope he does, honestly if you like this film then you know at the beginning of this when i said i'd give you a kidney? Yeah well i take the offer back.

We're reaching the end here promise, and to be honest i completely understand if you've left by now, but please don't Carly's just gone to bed and i need somone to share this misery with me, let's get this over with so i can go to bed shall we, “The Punisher: War Zone” was apparently made in 2008, which is pretty good, i mean those four years between the previous one all i heard whenever i went out was “when's the sequel to The Punisher coming out?”, well apparently it came out and no one ever knew, this film centre's around a bad guy called jigsaw (no this isn't the SAW film), who along with his brother loony bin jim go round and torture people in pretty gruesome ways (still now SAW), I have to admit that i don't really have anything to tell you about this film though, i think it had a plot roughly to do with the punisher, well possibly, it's one of those films you half watch because you know if you pay full attention to it you'll probably end up minus ten iq points, also because if you do pay attention you will probably never stop thinking about The Punishers hair in this.

Overall i would have to say the only film i would reccomend from this lot would be the 1989 Punisher movie, and this is mainly because it reminds me of films like The Last Action Hero and the Under Siege movies (i.e. Pretty bad but in the best possible way), but don't ever try and watch the two films from 2004 and 2008, you're better off picking up some Punisher collections from Red Sun if you want to learn anything about the character, and plus none of the comics have John Travolta in a hair piece.

(update: i saw the link that The Emerald Knight posted about halfway through this and saw it this morning i really suggest you watch it, and thank you to The Emerald Knight for showing me that a Punisher movie could actually be well done)