The Punisher (2004)

“Frank Castle is dead. Call me... the Punisher.”

Come back, Dolph Lundgren; all is forgiven.

The previous, straight-to-video outing for the Punisher may have been a bit silly, but it had charm and unwitting silliness beneath its po-faced veneer. This film isn’t and while, to those who are themselves po-faced, it may appear to be the better action film, it’s far more forgettable.

Oh, the set pieces are good; the big fight with the Russian, the opera scene, Howard Saint’s “Revenge” against his best friend and his wife; his fiery comeuppance. There’s lots of spectacular violence here. Trouble is, the film has three glaring faults.

The first is the casting. It’s harsh to say, but while Thomas Jane certainly has the acting chops he simply doesn’t have the charisma to be a leading man. Compare him to John Travolta, who does nothing but chew scenery all the way through but does so with real charisma- and in a role that sort of works when played as a cartoon baddie. There’s a charisma vacuum in the heart of the film.

Then there’s the fact that this is yet another bloody origin film, with far too much time spent on the deaths of Castle’s family including an interminable car chase. And that leads us to the third and most serious fault; by making this a film about Castle avenging his family, we lose everything about the Punisher as a character and his troubled morality as a bloodthirsty vigilante. The element of personal revenge takes this away and only at the end does he announce his “mission”. The film comes across as a generic revenge-themed action film and, when you play on this territory, there are better films around. A much more interesting film would have skipped the origin and addressed the issues around law and order vs. crude vigilantism that go right back to the Oresteia; this film fails to address that obvious theme at all.

A fairly decent action film, then. But a wasted opportunity.

The Punisher (1989)

"Who sent you?"

"Batman!"

I was pleasantly surprised by this film, I have to say. Not that it's any good, of course; it's a trashy '80s action film starring Dolph Lundgren and is neither big nor clever. What it is, though, is highly entertaining in all it's glorious trashiness throughout. A melodrama may be all it is, but it works.

The film starts with a crude but efficient combination of set piece and exposition which introduces us to Frank Castle, what he does and his backstory. The character isn't very deep, so an actor like Lundgren is all that's required and, moreover, the opening set piece features a doomed baddie who is portrayed with enormous quantities of ham. But the film soon settles down into it's entertaining Mafia vs Yakuza plot, with a bit of buddy buddy cop stuff thrown in there too. The film is well enough shot in its Australian locations and Jeroen Krabbe is also good enough as the mob boss forced to work with Castle. Even the child actors are mostly adequate.

It's all very late '80s, of course, from the music to the hardline attitude to crime, and one thing that really dates it is the subtext (probably not intentional; the film isn't that clever) of Japan gradually overtaking the USA economically, as everyone seemed to think was happening at the time. There's lots of martial arts action, with even the opening titles looking a bit like a martial arts film.

I like Snake too, a much needed comedy character and someone there to remind us of the extremely dodgy ethics of vigilante murder and how it's victims are not only the guilty; the film is hardly philosophical but it avoids presenting the Punisher as a hero, and I like that. The film is what it is, but for me it was both enjoyable and, ignoring small details, a more or less faithful rendering of the comic book character. This is more worth watching than you probably thought.