I have never seen The Punisher with Thomas Jane or Punisher: War Zone with Ray Stevenson, both of which I have been meaning to check out for quite some time, but never getting around to it. Since I had these on hold at the Library, I figured that I might as well drop the Dolph Lundgren version of the character into the mix as well. Prior to popping this into the DVD player, I was 100% certain that I had never seen any of it. Well, the first 3/4 of the movie I remember nothing, but the final 15 minutes did ring a bell. I'm wondering if I had happened upon it while channel surfing years ago and caught the ending at that time. Whatever the case may be, this movie sucks. I had no illusions this was going to be good or even acceptable. One of the reasons why I never really cared to see this was because the idea of casting Lundgren as Frank Castle was just....stupid.

The movie itself takes a lot of bits and pieces of other 80's flicks, especially Stallone's shoot 'em ups and ramps up the stupidity here. The writing is awful, the acting is laughable and the direction......well lets just say this should be a reel on how not to shoot a movie. The music, both soundtrack as well as the cues were horrible. All this is bad, but I just think the writing, or lack of it is the biggest culprit here. There is no backstory. Hell, we don't even get an origin story for the character as everything takes place 5 years after the fact. Not a way to grab viewers that have no prior knowledge of the character. If I hadn't read the comics as a kid, I'd for sure be lost. Anyway, definite Skip.