Jennifer Garner’s ‘John Wick’-Style Action Movie Coming to HBO Max; But it’s good?

Suddenly… Killer

In horror cinema, there is the subgenre of vampire films, where creatures suck the blood of their victims. In the audiovisual field, there are “vampire” productions: films and series that suck a formula or a genre without adding anything or giving the public in return. That’s exactly the case with The Punisher, a movie starring the ever-wonderful Jennifer Garner that is in the TOP 10 most-watched movies on HBO Max.

There are two types of reflection during the production of a cinematographic work. The first is the thought of the artist, who wants an amount for the budget in order to create something new, to be able to use the seventh art for a message, even if it passes through images in an entertainment film. The performances, the staging, the script and any other element that makes up the whole can be this differential.

On the other hand, there is the mentality of those who just want to use a production as a means of making (often high) money. In this segment, a fast-paced movie is delivered, totally bathed in a formula that has worked in the past, without adding any novelty or originality to the elements mentioned above. Here, the groundwork is done in the hope that the audience won’t notice the difference – since to them action is action, horror is horror, and comedy is comedy. It’s even a way of gloating over the viewer’s intelligence.

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Even bad films often bring in an element that stands out, which may not change our opinion of such a work (it’s still bad), but at least there’s something to admire. Precisely for this reason, in the humble opinion of whoever is speaking to you, the worst kind of film is one that tries to blend in with others within a genre, without adding any element in which it can be praised – only supported by the fact that “it is a genre film”.

Yes, there are a lot of crazy ideas for scripts that don’t work. But those at least dare, risk everything to make it work. And they often achieve their goal, it’s something that the viewer who watches many films is always looking for, an attraction of freshness. Unfortunately, The Punisher has none of that to offer. It’s one of the most generic and forgettable films of 2018.

The absurd script recycles Death Wish (1974) – which was remade with Bruce Willis earlier this year – and Marvel’s anti-hero The Punisher, starring a 50-pound housewife, played by Jennifer Garner . In five years, she goes from the status of a mother of the American suburbs to that of a murderous and immortal assassin, who will leave Ripley and Nikita in the dust, after the assassination of her family. And there are some great examples of strong, badass female characters working, through pseudo realism.

Nothing is explained and everything is played out for us to accept it as we would in any other action movie. The problem is that here, too, there is no amusing exaggeration. It’s a job that takes itself more seriously than it should. In an instant, the woman straps three dead criminals upside down on a Ferris wheel. Don’t ask me how she did it. Moreover, the lack of expression in the text is so great that one has the impression of watching during a satire of such films, since the feature runs through all the elements of the libretto, with moments beyond novels and poor performances. Even the original title sounds like a parody: Peppermint – something like mint. Isn’t it funny to give a title like that to an action film?

The staging is by Pierre Morel, a French filmmaker sponsored by Luc Besson, who, under the tutelage of the great director, delivered more solid works, such as the first Implacable Search (2008), and without him, he made beautiful slip-ups, like like The Sniper (2015), starring Sean Penn. Even Besson himself, the undisputed master that he is, knows how to create strong and identifiable female characters, even in films that don’t quite work, see Colombiana (2011 – of which he was a producer) and Lucy (2014) . The Punisher is nothing but a carbon copy that has already lost its readability.

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