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.
