Roger Eberts review of The Punisher wasn't stellar, but he did say the writing and acting was uniformly superb and the characters well developed. His main beef was that the movie was too dark and depressing. But any fan of the books would realize that Castles world is very dark, his existance mostly joyless.
I'm definately going to see this one ASAP, but I'll probably try to wait a little while for the crowds to thin out a bit.