The Punisher (1989)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1989
	Director: Mark Goldblatt (editor of The Terminator, Starship Troopers, Pearl Harbor, Bad Boys 2, ...)
	Actors: Dolph Lundgren (Universal Soldier, Rocky 4, The Expendables 1-2), Louis Gossett Jr., Jeroen Krabbé
	Country: USA
	Genre: Polar
	Conditions of visioning: 05.06.2013, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: For five years after his family was murdered by a criminal organization and he was left for dead, Frank Castle (Lundgren) has been hunting the crimials under the nickname of The Punisher. The head of that organization comes back to town.
Review: One of the few comics book (this one from Marvel) that was adapted in the 80's, long before the wave that started in the years 2000 with Spiderman in particular. I saw The Punisher years ago and had the memory of a cheap 80's polar. It still looks like this on the brand new Blu-ray edition, but with a nice high definition image. The sound however is very poor and high pitched, probably since the original recording: gun shots and explosions miss some bass. But beyond the cheap 80's feeling, there is a dark story of a man dispatching his own version of Justice, a vigilante (not unlike Batman). The tall and muscular Dolph Lungren seems like the perfect cast, he never smiles and is dead focussed on his objective: the guilty will be punished. I find it a very good choice to stage the action years after the trauma that created the vigilante, and not to spend the movie describing this phase, like it is done in almost every "super-hero" comics adaptation. An interesting detail is the role of Japanese groups slowly taking over America, which is typical of some movies of he same period like Die Hard or Robocop 3. Even if it looks cheap, I found this movie much stronger than the 2004 remake with John Travolta. I heard that the 2008 version (Punisher: War zone) is not too bad, I should try to get it.
Rating: 7 /10