50
For such a formulaic vigilante film, The Punisher has a far better cast than it deserves.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
20
A sickeningly manipulative, by-the-numbers revenge movie.
50
Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt
The most entertaining scenes focus on the lovable louts and losers who share the boardinghouse where the protagonist - based on a comic-book character billed as a superhero without superpowers - prepares his grisly exploits. The rest is mayhem.
38
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
The Punisher isn't Frank Castle; it's Jonathan Hensleigh. And the punishee is anyone sitting in the audience.
30
Sadly, The Punisher is about little more than bullets hitting bone, and how good it might feel to be on the right end of a gun.
70
Washington Post by Michael O'Sullivan
Unlike some of its recent ilk – "Spider-Man," for example – The Punisher is, no disrespect, a thoroughly morose and bilious affair. That is precisely what I like best about it.
16
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
The Punisher is a moronically inept and tedious piece of death-wish trash.
75
Rolling Stone by Peter Travers
Among the recent spate of comic-book movies, from "Spider-Man" to the "X-Men," The Punisher is unique.
20
Dallas Observer by Robert Wilonsky
The Punisher would be almost offensive were it not so inconsequential. There's just something terribly off-putting about a movie in which every gruesome death is a punch line, where a villain's homosexuality is used to lure him to his death and dozens of innocents are gunned down just to launch a film franchise.
20
As bad as the movie is, when it tries to be funny -- a hired killer who sings to his victims, a fat man named Bumpo, and an interminable fight scene choreographed to “La donna è mobile” -- it somehow manages to get several degrees worse.