The Punisher

I'm going to take a moment to talk about the philosophy of comic books, to give a better depiction of my feelings about this movie and what I was expecting. The Punisher is an exploration of the darkest aspects of human nature. The title character is essentially every faceless raw passion rolled into one person. He's not a super-hero in that he doesn't have any special powers, and he's not even really a hero. He's just the protagonist. Where Superman is everything that humanity should be, Spiderman is our struggle with our strengths, and the Hulk is our struggle with our weaknesses, the Punisher is everything we should not be. He represents not the struggle with power and weakness, but the succumbing to both. The only struggle epitomized here is coping with a false view of who we are. The character of the Punisher has allowed his rage and dark ideas to control him and kill him spiritually. He feels no remorse or satisfaction in his actions, and is driven to continue out of a sense of identity that is held up by the facade of justice. This is not justice, but justification. Not of criminal elements, but of self. He has re-fashioned himself in the identity of a natural force of justice acting where the law cannot and god will not, giving him absolution for his actions. If he were to stop killing people he would lose his reason for existing as what he is. Morality creeps back in. He avoids confronting the fact that he is not a force but a human, and as such subject to the same ultimate justice as everything else, by chasing it all away with alcohol.
On a human level the idea here is that we put up false images of who we are and even go so far as to convince ourseves that we are that way. We use it to justify our grossest of failings. It's not the weaknesses we are struggling to divest ourselves of that we seek to justify, because we are trying to get rid of them, and our benevolent actions need no justification. So it is rather the darkest parts of our souls, the hidden hatreds and resentments, that we absolve of responsibility. Typically we do this by projecting our faults onto others who are worse. The Punisher only kills criminals and drowns out the rest with Wild Turkey.
As a movie The Punisher devolves very rapidly to his miserable state of 'monster' and spends its time reveling in its darkness. Because his goal is to kill people we don't get any "put down your gun" stand offs, just one-liners and brutal denouncements followed bu bullets or knives. There are some remarkably bloodless mass murders and several people die in scenarios where you wonder who decided to put that on film. Most of the enjoyment here comes from the atmosphere and pacing which are generally held intact through the movie. Everything is brutal, thourough, and darkly passionless. If you're looking for happy, you won't find it here.

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