Mind you, I've heard a thing or two about the Punisher; I do try to stay informed. For those of you who aren't familiar with him, think Batman, minus the bankroll, add guns. Or, perhaps Wolverine without the claws... and the metal skeleton. Basically, he's a ex-marine/ex-FBI undercover agent who was looking forward to a bit of retirement, only to have what he loves most taken from him by some mob guys who didn't agree with the outcome of his last job.
I missed this one in the theaters when it came out. Several of my friends said I hadn't missed much. After the last Punisher movie's lackluster performance, I had pretty much decided to skip it. Now that I got the chance to see The Punisher on my PSP, I found it to be pretty decent. I don't know what people disliked about this movie. The characters may be more on the "flat" side, rather than "larger than life", but they're based on comic book characters. I found the acting and character development to be perfectly appropriate.
I had the good fortune of receiving a signed copy of the graphic novel that goes along with The Punisher movie when the game came out. I read it top to bottom and found it to be a very nice story, adding some nice insight into the human side of The Punisher - something that's easy to lose sight of at times. The story in the graphic novel differs a bit from the story portrayed in the movie, but if there's something I've learned from the latest comic turned movies, it's that the movie is going to be an "interpretation" of the story. In this case, the characters were changed around a bit, and there's some side stories that were cut out for time, I would assume, but it's a good story. I didn't realize some of the differences until looking back at the graphic novel after watching the movie.
As for the video quality itself, I found that some of the early parts of the movie that had excessive motion seemed to blur a bit. This was noticeable, for example, when some baddies were walking toward the camera quickly, causing their heads to bob up and down. This blur seemed to stop once I got deeper into the movie, even though things tended to move fast often, with this being an action flick and all.
The sound is superb - just the stereo sound did a nice job of placing the sounds spatially where they should be. There were a couple of places where it was so good as to be noticeable. I even rewound the video and replayed one part to hear it again - just to check out the effect. Mind you, I was using a pair of Headbanger Ear Subs, so that could have helped the experience a bit.
If you're a fan of the Punisher or if you're like me and you've been tempted to see The Punisher but never got around to it, you might want to check it out. It's actually a pretty decent action flick and stays truer to its Marvel comic roots than a lot of other films.
