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rstreno
Reviews
The Punisher (2004)
Holy crapoly, what a horrible movie - Spoilers
Ugh. Where to start. Spoilers contained herein, but if that causes you to not see the movie, I've done you a favor.
My posse and I had the theater to ourselves for a mid-afternoon showing of this unbelievably bad piece of cinematography. This was a good thing, as the only thing keeping us interested was the constant trading of MST3K-like comments.
There were only 5 good things about this movie:
1-4: Bare boobies (four of 'em). 5. It ended.
The list of bad things would be nigh-impossible to list, due to the sheer number, however I will try to highlight some of them:
1. Dialog. Badly written. Badly delivered. Bad, bad, bad.
2. Acting. Particularly Travolta. The only reason to respect Travolta is because he's a pilot and has his own jet airliner.
3. Gay-bashing. Since when is it cool to blackmail someone because they're gay?
4. Unbelievable amounts of suspension of disbelief. Frank Castle seems to have healing ability on par with Wolverine. Bullets can't stop him! He gets shot about a bazillion times in the beginning of the movie, and a while later (no more than 5 months), he's fully healed and ready to kick butt.
5. At one point, the lackey character is selling out his boss (Saint), and has to tell him a lie. The actor delivers those lines so woodenly, that if I were Saint, I would have never believed him.
6. The cars. At one point, there's dueling early 70's cars. Why would both the protagonist and the hitman from Memphis both be driving vehicles like that.
7. The singing hitman (from Memphis). Oh for God's sake! Come on!
8. Location Location Location. Saint is in Tampa and is working with the Cubans. Last time I checked, Tampa wasn't the hotbed of super-criminal activity.
9. Location (redux). The hitman is from Memphis. Memphis? Tennessee? At least I now know where all the best hitmen hang out-- Elvis' place.
10. The Russian. He's big, he's strong, he's a freakin' cartoon character in his bright red and white striped shirt.
11. All the rest of the villians. Half of them looked like they were over the age of 60. The other half were stereotypical latino characters.
There are very few movies I have absolutely hated in my life. Boiler Room and Timeline were two of them, but I rank them higher than this movie. The Dolph Lundgren film was even better than this piece of trash. Please, do yourself a favor and don't go see it. For the love of God, please!
Ambush (2001)
Excellent film in the series. Bested only by The Star
Excellent film. All of the other posters have grabbed the essence well, so I won't dwell on it. The only nit-pick is that he's in a 740i, which does not come in a stick shift. Yet there are a number of scenes where the Driver is shown pushing in both brake and clutch. Well worth seeing, though.