2004, United States. Starring Thomas Jane, Rebecca Romijn, John Travolta, James Carpinello, Ben Foster, Laura Harring, John Pinette, Roy Scheider. Dirext"cted by Jonathan Hensleigh. Available on DVD from Amazon

What did I do? Why do I have to be punished by watching this movie? Truth be told, I didn't even know if I was going to review it since technically I didn't rent this for myself. It was a request from the li'l lady, who has a fondness for all things comic book in nature. She even managed to watch that Roger Corman-made Fantastic Four film and that unspeakably awful live-action made-for-TV Justice League movie. So while she may not be able to tolerate pretentious Frenchie films or anything with zombies, she's possessed of stamina for a different type of bad film. Tempting as it was to give The Punisher a pass on these grounds, I figured my initial statement was that I was going to review everything Netflix sent me, not just everything I wanted to see from Netflix. Since the name on the envelope is mine, then The Punisher gets the same treatment as everything else. And anyway, it's nice to have a girlfriend who makes me write statements like, "Yeah, she made me watch The Punisher instead of, "Yeah, she made me watch a Sex and the City marathon."

To settle things right up front, let me say that even when I was interested in comic books, I hated The Punisher. I thought he was boring character, the sort of comic book nerd wet dream of a tough guy that makes people who read the comic think they're tough too. I could never understand the appeal. Everything was so repetitive, so fantastically boring and above all, just so desperate for some sort of comic book street cred. When the first movie came out, I saw it because I always see crap like that when I stay up late. It was a pretty bad movie, but at least they put The Punisher in normal clothes instead of that ridiculous spandex skull costume he wears in the comic book. I guess a lot of people were upset that they ditched the skull logo on his chest, but as far as I'm concerned grown men shouldn't be parading about in skull logo t-shirts regardless of how well armed they may be.

When they announced a new, big budget version of The Punisher was going to attempt to ride the coattails of Marvel's success with the Spider-Man and X-Men movies, it didn't really make any impact on me besides inspiring my usual bout of nerdy jokes about them making an Alpha Flight or Power Pack movie. The Punisher came and went, and about the biggest praise this film got when it was released was that it was better than the Dolph Lundgren Punisher movie. Now that I've seen it, I don't know if I agree. If it is better, it's only marginally better and only because it has a slightly bigger budget and because you get the satisfying pay-off of seeing John Travolta set of fire and dragged around behind a car.

You probably know the story by now, even if you aren't familiar with the comic book, since the same basic character has been used in about fifteen million movies this year alone. The good man (in this case one Frank Castle, played by Thomas Jane) has his whole family wiped out by criminals and thus launches a one-man crusade to punish the evil. Batman did it. All those guys in spaghetti westerns did it. That big fat grandma did it in Surf Nazis Must Die. The trick to making it into a plot for your movie is in adding interesting characters and sub-plots to augment it, which The Punisher fails to do. The entire movie is literally nothing but the guy stalking Travolta and his goons and killing them. He takes some time to cause a ruckus with Travolta's business ventures, which seems an odd thing to do since he's just going to kill the guy in the finale anyway, but I guess they had to pad this thing out somehow.

They also try to pad it out by giving The Punisher a cast of eccentric neighbors I'm told come directly from the comic book. None of them really add a thing to the story, and they're all pretty dull. Maybe the fat guy was a little interesting, but the pierced guy was zero-dimensional and Rebecca Romijn has nothing to do but try to romance the Punisher after knowing him for a few days and also after discovering that his wife, child, and entire family were murdered less than a year earlier. Hey, class act! These characters basically exist so they can be caught and tortured by Travolta's goons, thus showing their loyalty (even though they've only talked to the Punisher once or twice, and he hardly said anything in return) and giving Frank Castle the strength he needs to fight on and put an end to John Travolta's ill-advised "little page boy" haircut, which for the most part, he keeps mercifully pulled back for most of this film.

So since I try to be the eternal optimist with any film, let me point out the attributes that kept The Punisher from being a complete stinker of a film. Thomas Jane is a decent actor, even if he's given practically nothing to do but furrow his brow and mumble. He bulked up for the part and looks good. The real miracle is that somehow someone managed to restrain John Travolta and keep him from launching into his usual Shatner-esque histrionics. I wouldn't call his performance good. There are some really awkward lines, and he never seems to be conveying the correct emotion for the scene, but at least he's not ranting and raving and being all Battlefield Earthy. You know, it might have been better if he had let go just a little. At least someone in this movie would have been memorable besides the mincing fat guy. There is mercifully little CGI, and when it does rear it's computer generated mug it's just so we can watch someone drag John Travolta through a lot full of exploding cars, so we can forgive it. The fight scenes are okay. I think there were only one or two instances of slow-motion John Woo style diving with a gun. And I don't think anyone held their gun sideways, which I hope is representative of the fact that Hollywood has figured out how stupid that whole trend was.

Even with those positive points, the flaws in the film significantly outweigh what it does right. For starters, as I said, there is no plot beyond "man hunts down gangsters." Even Steven Seagal films with that plot gave us a little more to go on in their running time. I guess defenders of the film could refer to this skeletal plot as "lean" or "streamlined." Completely unengaging is the phrase I'd use. There's no tension whatsoever. We know exactly how the film will end, know exactly what will happen, and The Punisher never once sees fit to throw us or a curveball or attempt to do anything but fulfill the most obvious course of action. It makes for very boring viewing, especially stretched out to two hours. There's not more than eighty minutes worth of movie here, and even that would be a pretty thin affair. Why they pad things out to two hours is beyond me.

The atmosphere, as you would guess, is decayed and grim. So relentless and unimaginatively grim that it, too, becomes completely boring. The film screams at you, "look how bleak I am!!!" and just comes across as desperate to seem tough. Although like most Marvel characters, the comic book Punisher was based in New York, the movie has him working in Tampa. Tampa? Seriously? And a Tampa that seems totally devoid of a police force that does anything other than show up for press conferences. Well, at least we're spared scenes of the Punisher and Rebecca Romijn's waitress bonding over a trip to Busch Gardens to ride the Montu and Kumba and watch monkeys jack off. Hmm, maybe that's what this movie needed. Like the plot itself, the Tampa locations sap the film of any sense of energy. Nothing against Tampa, but it's a boring town no matter how they may try to pass it off as "the Miami of central Florida." Something about The Punisher, beaches, and palm trees just doesn't mix.

Director Jonathan Hensleigh does not have what you might call a sparkling resume. In fact, The Punisher is his first film as director, but he's worked as a screenwriter for The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, Jumanji, Armageddon, and that third Die Hard film. In addition, he was an executive producer on the Nicholas Cage remake of Gone in 60 Seconds, Armageddon, and Con Air -- which means that he is yet another member of that seemingly endless line of Michael Bay/Jerry Bruckheimer acolytes mucking up action cinema. He's also responsible for what little script there is here, but while he fails as a writer, his direction is less nauseating than Bay or many of the other action directors running around. At least he doesn't shake the camera around wildly. There are very few over-stylized directorial tricks, for which I'm thankful. I reckon the material demanded a more low-key, low-razzle-dazzle approach, and if nothing else, at least Hensleigh gave us that, and that alone is reason enough for me to not completely dislike this movie. It's not enough for me to recommend it to anyone, but these days you have to take what you can get.

Comparisons to other recent Marvel Comics adaptations are inevitable, which is too bad for The Punisher since those include two superb X-Men movies and two superb Spider-Man movies. If only The Punisher had been able to compete with Dr. Strange or that Albert Pyun Captain America movie where Cap doesn't wear his goofy outfit or use his shield. Up against that competition, The Punisher is a masterpiece. But up against movies that have actual plots, compelling and complex characters, and entertainment value, The Punisher just seems shabby. I reckon it's more enjoyable than Daredevil only because Ben Affleck makes me want to cough up my own skeleton.

The last refuge of a film like The Punisher is the action scene, and even those fail to ignite any sort of emotion whatsoever. The best action scene, in which Castle battles some hulking hitman in his apartment while classical musical blares and no one else notices until the very end has also been done about a hundred other times. Well, no, a lot more than that. The rest of the action is surprisingly unengaging partially because there's no reason to care about any of it, partially because you know how it all ends anyway, but mostly just because it's choreographed without any energy whatsoever. The lesson we take away from most Jackie Chan films is that if your film lives and dies by its action scenes because the plot is so poor, then you better at least try to make the action scenes entertaining. Earlier I referred to the direction being mercifully low on the shaky-cam style of action filming. Unfortunately that also lets us get a look at how uninspired the action scenes are.

The Punisher tries to insulate itself from being compared to its more accomplished brethren by being nastier, more violent, and more foul-mouthed. Once again, all this winds up coming across as desperate, like an annoying little brother trying to shock people by getting a stupid piercing or a tattoo of the Punisher logo. It's too low-brow to be in the same class as other the bigger Marvel movies, but it's still too polished and calculated to be as grim as it pretends to be. It's fitting that the soundtrack features that horrendous band Drowning Pool, because The Punisher reminds me of all those bands comprised of boring suburban guys pretending to be tough and tortured as they scream about the streets and pain and rage.

Labels: Action: Superheroes, Netflix Diary, Year: 2004