It's great to see a movie make no compromise in staying true to the comic book it's based on. "The Punisher" is unrelenting when it has a chance to be violent, something other adaptations have failed to do. That means little when you see the final product.
Frank Castle (Thomas Jane) has made his final bust and is planning his retirement. When things go awry during a party, his family is murdered and he is thrust into a battle with Howard Saint (John Travolta), a Tampa underworld king. Seeking vengeance, Castle begins to dismantle Saint's group one by one until his revenge is complete.
Simply put, "The Punisher" just doesn't work. In fact, it's flat out terrible. While it does do a fine job of keeping the tone of the comic with explicit violence and overly dark settings, it just doesn't come off as entertaining. It has a few brief moments where you may get drawn in, but then it's onto another scene that throws you back out.
It's not the performances as John Travolta once again plays a trademark bad guy like he did so well in other actions movies like "Broken Arrow." You learn to hate him early on and those feelings never dissipate. The major problem here is you feel the same way about Jane too. Maybe it's the way he handles the entire situation, but there's no way to cheer for him. Then again, you're not really supposed to either.
That's the main problem here. There's nothing to latch onto to pull you into the rather generic and cheap story. This is, at its heart, a very simple revenge tale and there's nothing here to make you believe it's anything but. Only one character has anything going for him and that is of course the Punisher. Since you can't pull for him, there's no reason to dive deep into the film.
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