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I have officially forgiven John Travolta for being in some of the shittiest movies ever. While he started out as the dancing homo in Grease and Saturday Night Fever, I feel he has atoned himself by being in some very kick-ass movies over the past few years such as Face/Off, Basic, and his latest, The Punisher. The Punisher, based on the Marvel comic book hero, is played to perfection by Thomas Jane and Travolta plays an equally perfect arch nemesis Howard Saint.

Frank Castle is a soldier turned FBI agent who, in his last gig with the FBI, busts an illegal weapons sale, resulting in the death of the son of Howard Saint, a super-rich and super-powerful man with a money laundering business and a lot of hired guns. Saint has his men go to Castle's family reunion and gun down everyone in sight. His wife and son escape temporarily and Castle pursues, but is minutes too late and sees his wife and son lying dead in the road. The hit men shoot Castle, rough him up, and then stick him on a boat which they set on fire, but Castle flies off in the ensuing explosion and is eventually rescued by a local man who nurses castle back to health. A few months later Frank Castle is no more and in his place is The Punisher. The first hint you get about how much ass the movie is going to kick is when the local man tells Castle to go with God, to which Castle replies "God's going to sit this one out." A solid hour and a half of ass-kicking ensues.

Now you may be thinking to yourself "Randy, I've seen this same plot a thousand times. Man gets family killed and vows to get revenge on their killers. What makes The Punisher so special?" Good question. I'll tell you what makes the Punisher so special. You see, not only does Punisher eventually kill Saint and all his family and henchmen, he completely destroys everything he loves. He starts off by stealing fifty million dollars of Saint's laundered money and redistributes it among the public. This gives Saint a black eye with his business partners because if a man loses fifty million, nobody wants to do business with you. Then he blows up a boat with another multi-million dollar payroll. In the meantime he kills everyone Saint sends his way, including this big motherfucker of a Russian, played by professional wrestler Kevin Nash, who is about three times Punisher's size.

But here's where it gets really interesting. Rather than kill everyone himself, he decides to turn Saint against his wife and best friend. He arranges it so that Saint gets all kinds of evidence that his wife is cheating on him with his right hand man. So then Saint kills his right hand man and then throws his wife over a bridge, landing directly in the path of a train. Then after Punisher has decimated all of Saint's henchmen and Saint is the only one left, he explains that he framed his wife and best friend and tells him that he killed both of his sons and made him kill his wife and best friend. Then he ties him to a car, which he then starts and sends through a lot of cars he explodes that just happen to form his personal logo with the fire. How cool is that? In the end, Punisher is still alive and Saint is crying like a little bitch just before he dies.

If anybody ever fucks with me, this is exactly what I'm doing. Only I don't have combat training. Or weapons training. Or an armored car. Or muscles. Or a bulletproof vest. Or an endless supply of guns. Or surveillance training. Or a badass t-shirt with a skull on it. God dammit, I'm gonna get my ass kicked.

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