The Punisher – Early Review – Will Viewers Be Rewarded or Punished?

The Punisher – Will The Show Reward Us For Watching It Or Punish Us?

Marvel’s The Punisher

Marvel’s The Punisher is finally out! Yes, for those who don’t know, Netflix released the first season of The Punisher on its platform on 17^th November 2017. Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) is back as he seeks out violent vigilante justice for people who deserve it, after being introduced in the second season of Daredevil.

The story of the first season is as follows:

After exacting revenge on the people responsible for the deaths of his wife and children, Frank Castle uncovers a conspiracy that runs deeper than New York’s criminal underworld. Now known as the Punisher, he must dig deep into the conspiracy to discover the truth about injustices that affect more than just him and his family. Assisting the vigilante in his quest to fight criminals are best friend Billy Russo, who runs private military corporation Anvil, and former NSA analyst Micro, who shares common enemies with Castle and helps him as part of a so-called marriage of convenience.

The Punisher Trailer:

As per the initial reviews, the show is a fresh take on Frank Castle, looks quite promising and is worth binge-watching to. Let’s read some reviews on the internet to get a better picture:

New York Times
The action picks up as the season progresses, but The Punisher never quite gets in touch with the visceral roots of its material, something that all of the other Netflix-Marvel series do, no matter how much they distance themselves from their comic-book sources.

AV Club
Although The Punisher could be the most ambitious of the Marvel Cinematic Universe shows, with its unflinching exploration of grief, anger, and trauma, the series still feels awfully up in the air at the midseason mark.

Variety
Thanks to Jon Bernthal’s seamless performance as the non-superpowered vigilante Frank Castle and showrunner Steve Lightfoot’s sharp, conscious storytelling, The Punisher approaches the high points of Marvel’s Jessica Jones by introducing a damaged, deadly character and telling his story as one piece of an unjust whole.

Uproxx
At times it almost seems as if the creative team’s heart isn’t in the grim-n-gritty of it all, and we’ll get stretches of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang-style buddy comedy where Micro’s chatty, neurotic ways get on Frank’s nerves, while Micro is stunned by how casually Frank kills people.

LA Times
The show’s greatest hurdle may be the worn nerves of TV audiences who have learned how and when to shield themselves from the on-screen violence–fictional or real. Preserving one’s sanity requires strategic bouts of dulling the senses. For The Punisher to make any sort of lasting impact after its association with one of the worst mass shootings in American history, it would have to be a masterpiece. And it’s not.

Salon
A love for skull-pounding action flicks should be a prerequisite for enjoying The Punisher, but even those who count ourselves in that group may find it tests our limits in the same way any hero who solves problems strictly by punching through them eventually does.

The Hollywood Reporter
With the exception of The Defenders, which was always announced as a miniseries, each and every one of the Marvel/Netflix shows has been 13 episodes and they’ve all had comparable lags in pacing and stumbles in storytelling to reach that number. But Marvel’s The Punisher is the first one that feels at least twice the length it should be.

GameSpot
The Punisher is grounded in the way that Jessica Jones and Daredevil’s first season were; these aren’t superhumans or gods, and there’s no magic or alternate dimensions. There’s not even a shadowy organisation pulling strings behind the scenes, waiting to be unmasked and defeated in an epic team-up (at least, not in the first six episodes). There’s only Frank, and the military, CIA, and other government operatives who screwed him over and murdered his family.

The reviews seem to place it better than Marvel’s The Defenders, which premiered in August this year. Anyone who doesn’t live in a cupboard under the stairs, go to Netflix and start streaming today! For people who can’t afford to buy Netflix subscription, there are always torrents!

Binging starts tonight. My reviews after I’ve watched it! Watch this space for more.