The Punisher

An undercover agent's entire extended family is murdered at a reunion on the orders of one man, and he spends the rest of the film dismantling that man's life instead of simply shooting him.

Thomas Jane plays Frank Castle as somebody methodical rather than furious. The film’s best decision is that he does not go straight at Howard Saint. He moves into a derelict apartment block occupied by three outcasts and takes the man apart by studying his family until he knows their every move, which is a colder idea than a shoot-out and a much better one.

Those three neighbours are the only warmth the film allows itself, and it makes them pay for it.

It draws on two specific comic runs, The Punisher: Year One and Garth Ennis’ Welcome Back, Frank, and it is the only film here that reads as an adaptation of a tone rather than of a plot.