Posted: 04/24/2004

The Punisher

(2004)

by Gary Schultz

The Punisher is the newest comic book adaptation from Marvel Comics starring Thomas Jane in the lead role. Now, growing up during my comic book years I was a Marvel kid. I collected mostly Marvel, with a few DC and independent books aside. The Punisher was never one of my favorite books. It had its good storylines here and there but for the most part it wasn’t the coolest book on the planet. The Punisher to me always felt better off being a kick-ass guest star or villain. Now this is the second time the Punisher has been brought to the mean screen. The first time was in 1989 on a ten million dollar production starring Dolph Lundgren. This time out it’s a thirty million dollar production starring Thomas Jane and John Trovolta.

My first reaction after seeing The Punisher was that it was okay. It pretty much washed over me with very little that I can take away from it. The movie felt uneven, like it didn’t quite know what kind of monster it wanted to be. At times it’s funny, it tries to be dark and it tries to be character driven. But the thing is the Punisher is just not that cool of a character. He’s out for revenge and it’s justified. Big deal…so is Batman and he’s got better toys. Ever since Marvel’s new breed of comic book movie we’ve seen great adaptations like Spiderman, The X-Men films, the Blade films and we’ve seen pretty good adaptations like Daredevil, Hulk and Hellboy, (Hellboy not being a Marvel film but still included) Punisher ranks somewhere just below those films. And actually upon further screenings I like Daredevil more now than I did before. The Punisher at times feels cut and paste, the score is unnerving and Frank Castle didn’t use nearly enough guns although they did work over time in the explosion department.

This is the Punisher. He’s a vigilante pitted on revenge. I wanted less cut-aways. When Frank Castle’s family is murdered it’s mostly cut-aways. When the Punisher dispenses justice on the bad guys the violence is up close and personal. That’s what I want to see. Some though guy violence. John Trovolta felt weird as the villain. They tried to make him a sympathetic bad guy who’s ruled by his wife played by the beautiful Laura Harring. Trovolta just feels out of place. Actually it’s Will Patton who takes the cake as the cool villain of this film.

I guess it wouldn’t be a comic book film without Rebecca Roman-Stamos but her character and the two other losers that live in her building are pretty useless and you spend most of the film hoping that they’ll get beat down by the Russian or something. The Punisher is an okay film. It didn’t make me want to kill myself afterwards. It didn’t make me satisfied. It didn’t make me much of anything. If you’re a big a fan of the Punisher go see it in the theatre. If not, wait until video and kept your fingers crossed that Spiderman 2 is going to be as cool as the trailers look.

So here’s what we’ve learned so far…let’s make better choices of what comic book to make into a movie, The Punisher was still better than the awful Spawn movie, Thomas Jane was Mickey Mantle and if Stan Lee ever reads any of these reviews let him know he’s on my dream interview list.

Gary Schultz is an indie filmmaker from Chicago.

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