By: debbie lynn elias
Let’s just cut to the chase. It was shear punishment to sit and watch “The Punisher.” Based on a top selling favorite Marvel comic vigilante, The Punisher is a super-hero of a different kind. No Spidey senses tingling for him, he relies on his intelligence, military background, gut instinct and inner fortitude to combat the powers of evil and through revenge and redemption. I like the comic books. I don’t like the film. Photo © Copyright Lions Gate Films
Agent Frank Castle is good at what he does. Very good. Thanks to Castle, the streets are a safer place to be. Unfortunately, some people don’t share that opinion of Castle, and most notably, one Howard Saint. Seems that Castle is the man responsible for the death of the son of the infamous arms dealer and now Saint has a score to settle. Aiming for the heart, Saint has Castle’s entire family eliminated, but as with most bad guys, he still seems to miss his prime target. In this case, Castle. Needless to say, the entire film becomes a cat and mouse game between Castle and Saint, full of guns, fights, darkness and complete inexplicable and incomprehensible chaos with the characters and the storyline.
Written by Jonathan Hensleigh and Michael France, this marks Hensleigh’s first outing as a director. (It could be his last.) Best known for some of the finest action adventure screenplays of our time, such as “The Rock”, “Armageddon” and “Die Hard: With a Vengeance”, clearly, Hensleigh needs to keep playing in his own backyard and stick to putting pen to paper and stay away from the camera. Always writing powerful stories with a comic sensibility, Hensleigh completely loses that touch here, giving us a film that takes itself so seriously so as to lose the inherent comic feel necessary to make a story and characters such as these work. As a result of his intensely serious directing style, the film has an overall sullen, downtrodden, brooding look that casts such a dark pallor, making it difficult if not impossible for one to even root for the good guy.
Making the direction of this film even more challenging, is the poor screenplay, which deviates so far from the original material so as to create characters and situations almost unrecognizable at points. Castle has now become almost robotic and unfeeling, even robotic, losing all the qualities that make him so formidable in his original comic book form. There is no real build-up, no real climax; not even an anti-climax. Just a droning, droll, never ending mess.
Tom Jane steps in as Frank Castle and while he holds his own going head to head with John Travolta’s Howard Saint, he falls short on believability and sensitivity – especially considering the story is predicated upon the death of his entire family. His strong suit with this role is clearly the grueling physical regime he undertook in preparation for the physicality of the character as opposed to character development and dialogue. As for Travolta, one must now wonder what the hell has been running through his head the past few years given the poor films in which he has elected to appear. This time, however, it’s not his fault, as Travolta gives a menacingly slick, obsessive, vengeful, gritty performance that far surpasses the script or even the overall film. A total waste of an excellent performance.
One bright spot in the film, however, is the overall effect of the action sequences. Relying on live action with actors and stunt personnel as opposed to CGI, Hensleigh gets high marks in this area. Even star Tom Jane performs over 90% of his own stunts. Kudos, kudos, kudos.
Cliched, at times cheesy, and even campy due to the over serious earnestness of Hensleigh’s direction, this is one punishment that will make you laugh and cry at the same – but for all the wrong reasons. Take my advice, don’t punish yourself with “The Punisher”.
Frank Castle aka The Punisher: Tom Jane Howard Saint: John Travolta Jimmy Weeks: A Russell Andrews Quentin Glass: Will Patton
Written by Jonathan Hensleigh and Michael France. Directed by Jonathan Hensleigh. A Lions Gate film. Rated R.
