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Rating: 3 stars

All movies seen on 04/16/2004

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The Punisher (2004)

Directed by Jonathan Hensleigh

Action

Most recently watched by sensoria, sleestakk

Overview

When undercover FBI agent Frank Castle’s wife and son are slaughtered, he becomes ‘the Punisher’—a ruthless vigilante willing to go to any length to avenge his family.

Rated R | Length 124 minutes

Actors

Viewing History (seen 1 time)


Date Viewed	Device	Format	Source	Rating
04/16/2004	Movie Screen	Film	Theater	3 stars
				(Average) 3 stars

Viewing Notes

This reivew originally appeared on Mediasharx.com. As of the last snapshot on January 3, 2005 it had received 1,071 reads.

The Punisher Doesn’t Punish Enough

THE PUNISHER has returned to theaters with a modern-day remake from director Jonathan Hensleigh (THE ROCK). The good news? It’s not as bad as the 1988 version starring Dolph Lundgren. The bad news? It’s not as good as it should be.

Thomas Jane stars in THE PUNISHER as Frank Castle, former Special Forces and CTU agent turned FBI, who is deep undercover on his last case as a badly-accented Russian broker involved in a weapons smuggling ring in Tampa, Florida. Castle is brokering a deal between some nameless Russians and two Mafioso lowlifes, or so it seems, when the FBI storms in, killing almost everyone in the process, including Castle and one of the Mafiosos, a kid named Bobby Saint. Suprising absolutely no one, Castle, is, of course, not dead; he was shot with blanks and he wakes up at a FBI holding facility, where everyone sends him off to retirement with a party before he heads out on vacation with his family to Puerto Rico.

Bobby Saint, who was killed in the raid, was the son of Mafioso Howard Saint, a man who is making his living laundering money for Cuban drug dealers. When Howard finds out about his son’s death he orders his sadistic consigliere Quentin Glass (Will Patton doing his best Robert Duvall from THE GODFATHER impression) to find out who this broker was and kill everyone who worked for him. However, when Glass discovers that the broker was actually Castle and where he is now, Howard’s off-kilter wife Livia orders that Castle’s entire family be killed. Thus, a squad of generic black-suited Mafia-types arrive at the Castle family reunion unannounced, killing everyone in the process, including Frank’s wife Betty and son Will; they also think they’ve killed Frank.

Of course, Castle spends another of his nine lives and survives with the help of a Puerto Rican fisherman. After five months of recovery, Frank rounds up his artillery and sets out to take his revenge on the Saint family, forming a surrogate family in the process.

Like a majority of superhero films as of late, the story has its ups and downs. The second and third acts, where Frank begins to take his revenge and forms a bond with his surrogate family, are where a truly interesting action film shines through. However, that film is bookended by the first and fourth acts, which are merely interesting at best and never convey the emotion that they should. It leaves the film feeling incomplete and as if the middle two acts were a completely different film from the first and fourth.

Conveyance of emotion seems to be a problem in this film. Half of the time, Thomas Jane conveys The Punisher as cold and calculating, which he is, but never once do we see the anger that Frank should have emerge. He never loses control, never yells, and rarely reflects the human emotions that we would expect. It seems that we never truly see him mad at his enemies, and that is a mistake.

John Travolta as Howard Saint is John Travolta playing almost every other villainous role he’s played since PULP FICTION, just less interesting. Travolta never convinced me that he was crazy or sadistic or even really evil. Just weird, honestly.

The true stars of this film are Rebecca Romijin-Stamos, John Pinette and Ben Foster who play Joan, Bumpo and Spacker Dave, respectively, three residents of a small apartment dive where Frank sets up shop. These three really shine and because of them, we actually see some humanity and some emotion in the automaton that is Thomas Jane. While they provide a touch of humor to the middle, they also provide an emotional resonance that the audience can sympathize with.

Surprisingly enough, the most distracting element in THE PUNISHER is the score. Trailers have overlayed the highlights with heavy metal and thrash rock, but you will not hear any of that appropriate music until the end credits roll. Instead, we’re treated to a bland orchestral score that is more appropriate to a film like BATMAN. The music is not powerfully angry as it should be; it’s merely melodramatic. The score should reflect Frank’s anger at life and sadness, but it manages only to convey the latter and that not effectively a majority of the time. This score affects the film’s mood noticeably and ultimately undermines the emotions that should be invoked in the audience. Instead, I was left rather indifferent.

While I hesitate to sound like a sadist myself, THE PUNISHER simply didn’t have a high enough body count and it was too light. This film should have been rooted in darkness, both physical and metaphorical, with bodies stacking up left and right as Castle takes his revenge. While there are some creative deaths in the film, it didn’t seem to be enough. Throw in a lame ending that takes a firey cue from DAREDEVIL (which was uneccessary and useless in that film as well), a soft revenge on Howard Saint, and a groaner of a last line and you’re left with a film that is average at best, lukewarm at worst.

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