Film Review: The Punisher

9/29/2004

The Punisher:



Things I learned from "The Punisher."

The first thing i learned from "The Punisher," is that apparently you can retire in your late thirties from the high-paying job of undercover government agent. Riiiight. I was also astounded to learn that a direct gunshot to the heart is easily survivable, as is a massive pressurized gasoline explosion. This was fantastic news, as you can imagine.

I don't know how close this is to the comic's backstory, but here's the movie's backstory anyway. Frank Castle is undercover as an arms dealer. Shit goes down and one of the buyers gets killed. The guy who got killed is the son of criminal/playboy Howard Saint (played with ZERO passion by John Travolta). At the funeral, Saint tells his lackeys that he wants Castle dead. Then his wife rears her saddened and veiled head to say that she wants his whole family dead first. Luckily for the crew, Castle is attending a family reunion! Generations of Castles all on the beach in Florida at one time. Enter about 40,000 rounds -- exit Castle family. In this scene, there is a half-assed attempt at a father-son bonding moment as Frank and his dad (probably the only good performance in the movie - Roy Scheider) hold down the fort for a while with shotguns and pistols from Castle Sr.'s gun collection. (In a moment of foreshadowing, the pistols are recently refurbished .45s that Castle Sr. has just received back from the shop. These go on to be The Punisher's sidearms.) Frank's wife and son have managed to get away in a truck, and he goes after them. Unfortunately, the bad guys get there first. In a direct ripoff of Mad Max, the wife and son are run down. Castle shows up. The antagonists let him see his dead kin, shoot him up a bit (including the aforementioned direct shot to the heart), blow up the pier, and take off -- job well done.



Cut to Castle returning to the scene of the family reunion slaughter. He's all bearded and beat up, a la Tom Hanks in "Castaway," and sporting handcarved wooden crutches. (Obviously necessary in the recovery process from a chest wound.) Inside the house, he loads up on guns from dad's collection, knives, grenades, anger and spite. And while he's leaving, he stumbles across the t-shirt that his son gave him as a retirement gift, wadded up and weathered on the beach. Can you guess what the graphic on the shirt is?

This should be pretty tolerable, right? Wrong. No one is playing their role with any dedication, so it all just looks staged.

Act II : Castle moves into the projects, gets a beat up old Chevy, stashes spring-loaded guns all over the house, tricks out the inside of the car with retractable steel plating, and starts drinking heavily. Here he meets the film's relief characters, a face-pierced twentysomething named Dave, a big, somewhat dimwitted dude named Bumpo, and Joan, an ex-alcoholic. Apparently, these are comic book lifts, and I'd be interested to hear what a fanboy had to say about them, because I thought they were a good offset to Frank's self-destruction. They were honorable, honest, funny, and somewhat desperate in their own right.



OK, so now Frank deems it time to arm up, go into Saint's place, and throw a whole bunch of his money out the window. This gets Saint's attention, needless to say. Now Saint realizes Frank's back and sends some dude called "The Russian" to go beat the shit out of him, which he does. Say, that reminds me of another thing I learned from "The Punisher." A 180-pound dude can take a 10-minute beating from a 300-pound dude, including being physically put through a wall, and shake it off. Interesting facts abound!! Anyway, Frank takes it, and then Dave, Bumpo, and Joan hide him as the rest of the Saint's crew come in to get details. They corner Dave, start ripping shit out of his face, blah, blah, blah. Frank gets pissed.



Act III : The only tolerable 20 minutes of film. Revenge is sweet, and punishment is sweeter. After applying his logo t-shirt to a Kevlar vest, Castle goes off after Saint. He sets him up lovely, causing Saint to kill some people who didn't deserve it, and who are very close to him. It's fucking brilliant. If you were in Saint's shoes, you'd be driven absolutely insane in the last few hours of your short-ass life. I won't spoil it for you.

The DVD special features are awesome. Check them out. There's a whole piece on Tim Bradstreet, who not only did a ton of the comic covers, but also the movie posters, in a fine piece of homage to the fan base. There's also a short on the generation of The Punisher which is equally as cool. In conjunction with Act III of the movie, these special features are worth the price of rental. Don't miss them.

The Punisher gets 5 clanks. I was gonna give it 4, but Act III and the special features saved its fate.

So says...IronLung!


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