THE PUNISHER (2004) Grim...but not grim enough I never read the Punisher comics, and my memories of the old Dolph Lundgren movie are not fresh - only that it involved samurai (ninjas?), he rode a motorcycle, and at least he looked right in the part no matter how much he can't act. I was ambivalent about another kick at that can; moreso when I'd heard that this would be the directing debut of Jonathan Hensleigh. Who? Think on this for a second - of the thousand monkeys who banged away at a thousand typewriters to make the script to Armageddon, he's the only guy who was credited with story and script. And he co-wrote the script to this one, too. Still, The Punisher is nowhere near as bad as it could have been. In fact, with some more vigilant editing there might actually be a pretty good movie lurking inside this one. Given that most movies only get longer as they get older, I don't think that's likely to come to pass. Thomas Jane - here credited as Tom Jane, which for some reason strikes me as way more androgynous - plays The Punisher, but before that he plays Frank Castle, an FBI agent with a happy marriage. That is to say, a doomed one - the wives of law-enforcement guys in movies don't get to live long if they're actually, like, happy. Castle's final undercover operation (for which he has inexplicably arranged to have his cover role shot dead) results in the death of an uninvited guest, who happens to be the son of a crime lord called the Saint, played by John Travolta. He's pissed, and is happy to have Castle killed - but the Saint's wife is even more pissed and wants his whole family killed. You'd think that would mean, his wife and whatever kids he has, but eight of the Saint's goons track Castle down to a family reunion in Puerto Rico and mow down his entire extended family - kids and all (though all violence against kids in this movie is kept off-screen). This saddening massacre is occasionally punctuated with fabulously misguided "adventure" music. The gold standard for this kind of scene is in Mad Max. With some trimming (this goes on way too long, and gets gratuitous and plays too much for action fun) this might have been a worthy comparison but as it is, forget it. They do a number on Castle and leave him for dead. So he comes back to Florida and moves into a run-down building, sharing a floor with three misfits - well, supposed misfits. There's a fat guy who's presumably gay and probably has some sad stories about it, a piercing enthusiast who definitely has some sad stories, and Rebecca Romijn as a short-order cook who - yeah, stop right there! I like her, but she's so wrong for this part. She's too pretty, too clean, too bright. I don't buy that her best friends are these two guys, and I don't buy that she only dates the biggest douchebags on earth. Anyway, after these three figure out who their new neighbor is they see him as a kindred, wounded soul and invite him over for dinner. The scene where they each say what they're thankful for could've been a movie-stopping disaster, but it feels right, especially Castle's simple, polite, but sad response. He spends a lot of time drinking and armoring up a muscle car, which is destroyed like two scenes later after he's serenaded by a stranger in a weird, refreshingly out-of-place scene you just know is here only to tickle big fans of the comics. The Saint hypothesizes that he wants to be with his family, and he's begging for help, so let's help him - and he's not that far off. Castle's story is a sad and cold one; the life he makes for himself as the Punisher is one in which he seems to take no personal satisfaction, even while he stands over his prey and recites the many ways in which he's orchestrated their doom. There are a lot of ways Jane's performance could have gone wrong, but he's always convincing at showing hints of pain and sorrow under a stoic surface. It's strengths like that which make this movie's missteps the more damaging. The biggest goof has to be an action scene involving "the Russian", a ludicrously tough hired goon who the Saint sends to Castle's new place. This is an old staple of stories where people take on organized crime, and a staple I'm fond of. The problem is, the best thing about this scene is that it makes this very likely the first R-rated movie with a pro wrestler in it since The Running Man. The fight is absurd - I could buy that a knife in the Russian's shoulder has no noticeable effect, but when he started beating Castle with his toilet and throwing him through walls, it got even more silly than it already was. Which was pretty silly, because this scene is intercut with the threesome down the hall lip syncing to opera and prancing around while cooking. These three have their moments when they figure into Castle's life but when they're serving as comic relief, it's unwelcome. And the costuming department should've been taken to task for giving the Russian that shirt. Man, what a hatchet job on what could've been a terrifying, life-or-death struggle. Other action scenes are well put together and functional, but more interesting is Castle's psychological warfare - both in a "torture" scene, and later on as he foments distrust between the Saint and his wife and his chief goon, though this depends on details like a prop fire hydrant (?) and Castle using exactly the same trick twice (lazy writing). At the end of the movie, he leaves his "mark" in flaming wreckage, like Daredevil and The Crow and who knows how many others before him - I know Hensleigh must've wanted to take it a step further than they did, but Castle does swerve to avoid a soccer player earlier in the movie, so we know he cares about the fate of innocent bystanders. What he does to leave his mark here seems a little hazardous. Except for one entrance accompanied by a crack of thunder and lightning as if we didn't get the point that he's here on evil business, I did like Travolta as the Saint. Out of this movie's many villains, he's probably the least dastardly and the most human - someone you wouldn't want to cross but a far cry from an embodiment of pure evil, which is what revenge movies usually have filling this role. Castle's final confrontation with him is quick and anticlimactic, and it's probably for the best that an audience can't take any more satisfaction in it than he does. (and if you think I'm spoiling anything for you, understand that in comic book movies, the hero ALWAYS wins) He gives a voiced-over explanation that what he does is not revenge, but punishment. I suppose if you enjoy doling out punishment, then it's not really punishment, either revenge or just sadism. Regardless of my ambivalence right now, The Punisher feels like it might turn out to be one of those movies which I remember fondly months later when its more forgiveable problems have faded from memory. It wasn't much fun, but the persistently sad and grim tone makes it a little more honest about its hero than you usually find in revenge flicks. Like I said, I never read the comics so I can't say if it's true to the spirit of the character, but if there are sequels to this movie I hope I never see a Punisher who enjoys his job. BACK TO THE P's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE