Bad Films I Love, Part Seven: The Punisher (2004)

On the face of it Marvel’s skull wearing vigilante The Punisher seems to be the easiest of their stable of characters to get right on film. All you need to do is get some beefcake who looks good with a gun, tool him up, set the movie in a rain soaked city like New York or Chicago and get a director who knows how to do noir and stage a good shootout. Of course it helps if you have a good script as well from a writer who respects the source material. So why after three attempts, has Hollywood never quite got Frank Castle?

First in the early nineties we got Mark Goldblatt’s interpretation starring Dolph Lundgren. One of many inferior comic book movies greenlit in the wake of Tim Burton’s Batman in 1989. Dolph certainly looks the part as Frank Castle even if he doesn’t have a massive skull on his chest. The problem is with this version is that they make Castle a killing machine who wouldn’t look out of place in a Terminator sequel. The makers mistake mumbling for character, and Dolph’s version comes across as some kind of homicidal junkie. Its fair enough that Castle has lost everything but the guy is still human and this is what makes his character someone to care about. More recently we got Lexi Alexander’s version Punisher: War Zone. This time we got Ray Stevenson in the part and a very different tone. Punisher:War Zone is so over the top in its comic violence and tone that its got more in common with Joel Schumacher’s interpretation of Batman rather than the comics. Stevenson looks good as Frank Castle but lacks charisma and again you don’t care. This time they get a villain ripped from the pages of the comic with Dominic West’s Jigsaw. With his scarred up features West doesn’t so much go over the top with the performance as in to orbit. its hard to take seriously and is one of the recent action movies to go over the top as a stylistic choice rather than anything to do with the story.

In the middle of this we had the 2004 version which to date is the most successful but still a deeply flawed movie in its own right. Screenwriter Jonathan Hensleigh took the directorial reigns for this one and cast Thomas Jane as Frank Castle. The movie begins with Castle as a happily married father who also happens to be an undercover agent for the FBI. During his final job before he seeks semi-retirement,the son of powerful mob boss Howard Saint (John Travolta) is killed. Following the wishes of his wife (Laura Elena Harring), Saint orders a hit on Castle and his family. Saint’s men track down the Castle family to an island getaway and proceed to kill everyone including Castle, or so they thought. Castle recovers, nursed back to health by a kind local man and swears revenge. He does this by attacking Saints business first and then creating disharmony and suspicion amongst his employees and his closest allies.

There are three BIG problems with The Punisher. First the location, setting the film in sunny Florida does very little for the film. The story really needs to be set in an urban wasteland with the decay mirroring the decay of Castle’s soul as he goes deeper and deeper into living only for revenge. Watching the movie and its pristine and sunny locations you can’t help but think that Castle should just chill out and enjoy a cocktail. The second problem is the decision to cast John Travolta as the villain. All you can think is ‘that’s movie star John Travolta playing a baddie’. The role really should have gone to an unknown so that our sympathies lie with Castle the whole way through. As it is you get a lot of Travolta in this film, and the role isn’t really as beefy as it should have been with a major movie star in the role. Howard Saint is really no better written then the typical villain in your average direct to DVD action pic and because he is on screen so much it really shows just how bad a decision this was. The third and perhaps biggest problem with the movie is its script. For starters its too long and a lot of the second act feels like padding. I can’t decide if having Castle finally go on a rampage in the last act was because the mobsters upped the stakes after his fight with the big Russian or if he should have just done this half an hour before. A lot of the scenes in the middle are taken from the comic and whilst pretty cool, they feel like padding out a film that didn’t really have a second act.

Ironically, one of the things that I complain about above is also one of the good things. The script doesn’t opt for an all out bloodbath the way the first and third movies do and this was a good decision. Castle attacks Saints finances and associates before the storming the night club scene in the last act, its as if he is unsure as to how this whole vigilante business works and is slowly building up to the out and out killing that he knows will be his only choice. The last scene highlights this really well with a voiceover and shot of Castle standing on the bridge. During this scene there can be no doubt that the man once known as Frank Castle is gone, replaced by the moral vacuum that is The Punisher. Thomas Jane owns the role of Frank Castle, its one of the biggest shames in comic book movie history that we don’t have more films in this series starring him. Alas Jane didn’t see eye to eye with the direction they were going in with the third film and left the production. He manages to make the role his own, in the quiet moments you can see his humanity slipping away from him and he also looks the part in the action sequences. Jane’s castle is also vulnerable rather than a killing machine mowing down mobsters. He gets wounded, in one scene he gets almost beaten to death. Making the hero someone who can almost die adds to the dramatic tension, a quality that many action films lacked before Die Hard in 1988. Speaking of the action sequences, they are incredibly well staged. For a film that should have been grittier, its almost a blessing that they decided to go slick as we were spared the shaky cam carnage that has ruined many a modern action film. The opening slaughter of Castle’s family is really well done without feeling lurid. The previously mentioned fight with the big Russian as played by former wrestler Kevin Nash is also brilliant, funny and brutal at the same time. The final scene is also really good and tense until the cheesetastic flaming car skull and disposal of the main villain.

So a bad film sure, but until Hollywood gets it right its also the best version we have of Marvel’s number one vigilante.

by Chris Holt