The Punisher (2017)

A Netflix series Season 1 - 13 episodes

This series has energy, violence paired with great dialogue and superior acting. This series is an extreme R.  However with its title, I doubt any viewer would be taken by surprise by the gore.  I had a few minor issues with some of the logic of the story; would trained military-level security really be that naive, along with a few computer details which furthered the story, but seemed a bit dumb. Suspend disbelief on a few plot points and the only thing to worry about is how to obscure the screen without missing plot details on the hyper violent portions (about 1/3 of this series). Jon Bernthal as  Marine veteran Frank Castle (The Punisher) makes his character believable, likable and almost heroic. Jon Bernthal grips the viewer's attention in a scene. His performanceis almost a masterclass in acting. The supporting cast especially Amber Rose Revah (as Dinah Madani), Ebon Moss-Bachrach (as David Lieberman/Micro), Ben Barnes (as Billy Russo) and Jaime Ray Newman (as Sarah Lieberman) make their characters feel alive and fully-formed. While I did find the violent scenes overly long with lingering close-ups, but that may be more due to my sensibilities.

In a satisfying, well-written movie with decent direction, any violence whether gun or otherwise should be pertinent and necessary to the plot of the movie  It was pointed out in this (SJ News  published 11/07/2017 on YouTube) discussion that the upbeat music, especially in trailers, can transform the violence into something exhilarating and attractive.  As long as the violence in a movie is not gratuitous, its perpetrators self-aware or super-villains who want to destroy our world ('cause you know, it's their thing) then being rated R is sufficient without resorting to censorship. Having just binged the 13 episode Punisher (2017) series, my next binge will include every Disney/Pixar movie still hanging in there on Netflix...at least until my heart rate and bp are normal.

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Punisher in the comics (only read a few myself) is basically a robotic killing machine.The Netflix Punisher series expanded the Punisher into a recognizable human (excluding his seemingly super self-healing skills). This series brought up issues that are not addressed with enough frequency. A trained soldier participating in a war returning home to live in peace needs in depth attention. This individual needs to be healed in order to re-adapt to society. Writers of a old Star Trek:TNG (S3-E11) episode did a very good overview of the morality and ethics of the State when faced with this situation. As for the length of Punisher series, I feel it earned its 13 episodes. However for my own sanity I had to balance my binge over a 2 day period. This series is intense.