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97 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
xx Beer for My Horses
75 Boy A
xx Christmas on Mars: A Fantastical Film Freakout Featuring the Flaming Lips
48 Death Defying Acts
85 Edge of Heaven, The
33 Elite Squad
80 Encounters at the End of the World
20 Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
86 Flight of the Red Balloon, The
54 Get Smart
73 Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
34 Happening, The
25 Hell Ride
78 Hellboy II: The Golden Army
44 Henry Poole is Here
61 Incredible Hulk, The
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46 Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer
57 Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D
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63 Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
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52 Milarepa
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37 War, Inc.
xx Whaledreamers
54 What We Do Is Secret
66 When Did You Last See Your Father?
54 You Don't Mess with the Zohan
39 Young People F**king
45 Zombie Strippers

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Punisher, The
Lions Gate Films Inc.


6.4

based on 36 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 62 votes
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MPAA RATING: R for pervasive brutal violence, language and brief nudity

Starring Thomas Jane, John Travolta, Laura Harring, Samantha Mathis, Will Patton, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Roy Scheider, and A. Russell Andrews

Marvel's unstoppable vigilante hits the big screen. After losing his family in to mob violence, undercover FBI agent and former Marine Frank Castle (Jane) decides to dedicate himself fully to the eradication of crime from America.

GENRE(S):	Action \| Adventure \| Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Michael France Jonathan Hensleigh
DIRECTED BY:	Jonathan Hensleigh
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: September 7, 2004 Video: September 7, 2004 Theatrical: April 16, 2004
RUNNING TIME:	124 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA / Germany

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Among the recent spate of comic-book movies, from "Spider-Man" to the "X-Men," The Punisher is unique.

USA Today Mike Clark

Trashy and disturbingly violent yet fairly zippy and amusingly cast.

Washington Post 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.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Considering the horrible buzz that had dogged the movie since its trailers first premiered, The Punisher turns out to be a likable underdog.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

The Punisher punishes. That's what he does, and that's all this movie does.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

That rare comic book movie that actually feels like a comic book. Which turns out to be mostly, but not entirely, a good thing.

Christian Science Monitor 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.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The second attempt to bring a dark corner of the Marvel comic-book universe to the screen, this comic-book-based revenge story is undermined by its inconsistent tone.

Philadelphia Inquirer David Hiltbrand

For such a formulaic vigilante film, The Punisher has a far better cast than it deserves.

San Francisco Chronicle Carla Meyer

It's a prevailing sense of humor that makes this an entertaining, if silly, film adaptation of the Marvel comic.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

Travolta is terrific as a bad guy, making Saint almost sympathetic. His co-stars however, flounder in a sea of bad lines, with poor Romijn-Stamos getting stuck with the worst.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The Punisher is so grim and cheerless, you wonder if even its hero gets any satisfaction from his accomplishments.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

There's something to be said for letting a comic book adaptation operate at the level of a comic book--i.e., with cheap laughs and ice-cold sadism.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

It's hard to imagine how anyone could sit through this thing except squirming critics and violence addicts in need of a particularly gruesome fix.

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

A tone-deaf muddle that shifts moods more often than its lone wolf vigilante rubs out bad guys, clocking in at a punishingly paced two hours and change.

Variety Joe Leydon

Fires blanks. Thoroughly routine, pic plays like a paint-by-numbers pilot for bygone basic-cable teleseries.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

The movie lives up to its “R” rating in the final scenes, but it’s too little too late.

Village Voice Benjamin Strong

With topical revenge fantasies already available (Dogville, the Kill Bills) and with Roy Scheider on hand as a gun-loving paterfamilias, The Punisher mismanages its greatest asset: an unusual embarrassment of camp riches.

Empire Chris Hewitt

A creaky script which avoids tackling the morality of Castle's actions, while Hensleigh doesn't do himself any favours by slowing the film's momentum with leaden editing.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Punishes the audience with a flat starring performance; Mr. Jane finds few sparks of life in a hero who wasn't all that lively to begin with.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Stephen Cole

An overemphatic revenge fantasy devoid of even a trace of excitement or wit.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

It features an insane amount of violence and a number of visual references to the comic, but it lacks the original's humor and spirit.

Premiere Aaron Hillis

From an audience perspective, the title’s fairly apt as well.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The Punisher isn't Frank Castle; it's Jonathan Hensleigh. And the punishee is anyone sitting in the audience.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

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.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Its lack of subtlety is clearly a point of pride, and Mr. Hensleigh's flat-footed, hard-punching style has a blunt ferocity that makes "Kill Bill" look like "In the Bedroom."

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

If you can get past the goofy writing, there's lots of noisy action in The Punisher, but little of it is particularly exhilarating. In fact, it's more of an endurance test. If you can sit through it, you should consider yourself duly punished.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

The movie is as grim and grave as the comic book. But it lacks atmosphere. It's often illogical and drubs you numb with its single dimension: noisy retribution.

Chicago Tribune Robert K. Elder

In a case study of how to screw up a simple, powerful revenge story, director Jonathan Hensleigh punishes audiences with an unbearably sluggish action movie that requires the word "action" to be placed in quotes.

Slate David Edelstein

A sickeningly manipulative, by-the-numbers revenge movie.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

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.

Dallas Observer 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.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The Punisher is a moronically inept and tedious piece of death-wish trash.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

It actually makes the 1989 version (starring Dolph Lundgren) look pretty good by comparison. Oh, yes. It's that ghastly.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Don't hold your breath waiting for The Punisher to be original, not for one second of its torturous two hours.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

The Punisher is such a bad film that it becomes inadvertently entertaining; it’s enough to make you pine for the original version of the black-clad Marvel Comics’ badass, played to awful imperfection in 1989 by Dolph Lundgren.

The average user rating for this movie is 6.4 (out of 10) based on 62 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Alisa H. gave it a7:
This movie wasn't as horrible as critics made it out to be. It was full of action, which was good, Thomas Jane was a great fit, which was also good (even though he's not coming back for the sequel), I really liked this movie simply because I saw it as a "Marvelized" Batman. Tragedy, by seeing his loved ones shot down in front of him and then taking action not particularly for vengeance but as the Punisher says, "True Justice". I say if you like Batman, then you may like this movie and of course if you're a fan of the Punisher you'll like this movie. Enough said.

Pat C. gave it a6:
A typical tale of vigilantee revenge that works because of the commitment of the actors to their roles.

Dan gave it a1:
If you didn't see every single mind-numbing piece of "action" coming from a mile away, then you are some kind of retarded half-man, half-monkey hybrid. There is not one second of this movie that is not a cliche, there is not one line that hasn't been done a thousand times before - and better. The hero's final plan is to just walk into the gunfire and hope the script doesn't care if he gets shot. Naturally, it works. Insultingly stupid. Everyone who gave this more than 6 is a waste of skin who should be harvested for their transplant organ value.

ed l gave it a9:
The problem with this movie was the marketing... After seeing the trailers I had no interest in watching this movie... Now, a year and a half after it came out, I finally watched it and must say that it is a good movie. The marketing team should be fired because the trailers turned me and probably the rest of the world away from this pretty good comic book movie. It's not as good as Spiderman, Batman Begins, or X-Men, but it's better than Hulk, Daredevil, Fantanstic Four, and Electra! Definitely worth watching and I am now looking forward to the sequel. Hopefully they continue with the same director style.

James A. gave it a5:
The only good thing about this movie is Thomas Jane's unbelieveably beautiful body. If he had taken off his pants I would have given it a 10.

Adam D. gave it an8:
I Love this freaking movie you know why because I am a fan of the punisher. I think in order to really injoy it you need to be a realy fan of the comic, and like all out violence. The people from the washigton post and the austin chronical are just god damn crazy to give it a 0 you guys shouldn't be reviewing movies, because this is a great movie you wouldn't noa good movie if it came and were to bite u in the butt.

Travis W. gave it a9:
Not the BEST film ever made, but definately on my list of the best 25. Great film, great cast. Some little inconsitencies from the comics sort of bugged me, but were excused by the mood and atmosphere that felt just as it should. Thomas Jane played The Punisher PERFECTLY, even if his hair wasn't slicked back as it should have been.

Punisher, The Lions Gate Films Inc.

Punisher, The
Lions Gate Films Inc.