Part 3, Dolph Lundgren Is...the Punisher!

After having watched both the 2004 and 2008 renditions of The Punisher in film by Marvel Studios and Marvel Knights respectively, I finally got a copy of the oldest version of The Punisher in cinema. This features Dolph Lundgren, known better as Ivan Drago in Rocky 4 and featured in many other movies alongside Sylvester Stallone and John Van Damme. Part of my perception of this last film, though first chronologically in the series, is no doubt derived from my previously watching two better films in terms of canon and general experience with the Punisher. There are lots of moments in this version that make me feel like I’m watching a 80s film. There are comedic moments (kids trying to pull a yakuza off a bus window with their little hands for instance) and then there are moments that make you realize this is also for adults (kids being held hostage by yakuza for child slavery). If anything, this version of the Punisher shows its age as a late 80s film in that it seems both corny and tries to portray a very dark story of the dark character from Marvel.

Dolph Lundgren is a good Frank Castle for all intents and purposes, especially considering he has the height and weight down. But the backstory is raped the most in this version. Not only is Frank Castle a former cop in this version, but he has two daughters. I don’t know where they got this idea. At least their death is somewhat relevant with a car bomb meant for Frank from the mafia. If anything, it’s better than the backstory for Thomas Jane’s Frank Castle with a single son and a massacre at a family reunion. But the Punisher’s previous career seems implausible in comparison to the other Punishers, since I inquire where a police officer would learn how to operate heavy arms and explosives of the caliber the Punisher works with. Not to mention the hand to hand combat that involves Solid Snake-esque moves. The appearance of the Punisher’s classic death’s head symbol is lacking on the Punisher’s outfit, the only appearance of a skull coming in the form of a dagger that Dolph uses on the baddies as a calling card. It works as an attempt to spice up the use of the skull imagery, but it makes the Punisher out to be some villain, when he’s supposed to be an anti hero by any standard.

The setting would appear to be New York, though it’s debatable on that point. If anything, this film doesn’t suffer from what many would call a comic book movie killer, warped backstory narrative, which Jane’s Punisher suffered from in some regards. This film is told 5 years after Frank Castle’s tragic loss of his family, so there’s no need for any development of Frank as a character, which had to be done with Thomas Jane’s portrayal. This gives the film some similarity with Punisher Warzone in that they both take place after the fact and emphasize the Punisher’s present conflicts with others and how his past connects indirectly. The Punisher also seems too reckless as a character in this version, not taking the body armor offered to him, though any other portrayal has the Punisher recognizing his limits and not being a complete maniac. The only involvement with the Punisher’s divided religious background in seminary is in the last seconds of the film where he says he sometimes still asks God if what he does is right or wrong. He notes that he’s still waiting and until he gets an answer he will continue to fight crime as the Punisher. Even the 2004 version emphasizes Castle’s religiosity a bit more in some manners, while Warzone puts the character in a church at one point.

There is another large issue I find with this film and that is the involvement of a character known as “Shake”. He’s what I would call a washed up Shakespearean actor turned alcoholic drifter, but even that wouldn’t justify the amount of suck this guy manifests on screen. His first appearance involves him begging a guy for money in a bar and confusing him by using the word thespian, making an obvious gay joke which barely got a chuckle from me. Not to mention the guy is an informant for the Punisher as he seems to have connections to the mafia and such. Later, he attempts to convince Frank that he should save the children held hostage, and for all we know, he didn’t affect Frank’s decision to save them at all. He serves a similar purpose to Mickey Duka in Thomas Jane’s version of the Punisher. He’s a goofy comic relief character that has connections to the antagonists. These two are no Microchip, but heck, even Microchip’s appearance in Warzone makes me suspect that the directors didn’t want to end with any ideas of the Punisher having a sidekick, since they are either written off or in Warzone, killed off as a sacrifice to save other lives.

There’s also the involvement of Frank’s past partner, which I think might be an indirect reference to Jimmy Weeks, if he’s canon at all, in that we have someone connected to Frank’s past. In this version, there is a definite conflict, since Lou Gosset Jr.’s character thinks that his partner is identical with the Punisher figure who he has tracked for the last 5 years since the incident that he thought killed his partner. But when he finds him alive, Frank brushes him off, stating that “I don’t need your help. You don’t understand,” “I’m better off on my own,” “I don’t need a partner,” and of course, “Frank Castle is dead,” which was the one line that made me think that I was actually watching a Punisher movie instead of a cheap attempt to pass off the name into what was a film based on the popular Rambo series in some form or fashion. Overall, the importance of the character is only clear at the end when the fate of Frank Castle is unknown, though apparently he survives. But the angle and the scene with the detective on top of the roof screaming “Frank!” made me think that this movie had suggested Frank committed suicide, though his line before to the son of the mafia boss would imply he was going to continue his one man war on crime, so the odd shot with the partner screaming Frank’s name like he was gone confused me.

The villains in this film are good Punisher fodder. Many times his villains are one-shots and in this case, the primary villain is a female, which makes me think of Ma Gnucci from Welcome Back Frank. Lady Tanaka, who made me remember ironically that the name of the Yakuza leader in the Punisher game was also Tanaka, is a brutal and malicious character. The oddity in this gang is not her as the leader of the yakuza, but her daughter, who is both American and mute, adopted at some unknown age and for some unknown purpose; probably to train an heir that couldn’t speak against her and couldn’t be traced to her family. She uses all manner of hidden weapons, including her earrings, but is killed with some difficulty as she is too weak to fight against the Punisher. The backstory told by the other antagonist indicates Tanaka takes the yakuza code of loyalty seriously, to the point of killing her twin brother after serving him a nice meal at home. Her two main henchmen near the end of the film die amusingly. One gets impaled against a wall with a spear and the other falls over after a kick from Frank onto a spiky helmet (accident?) But the other antagonist, introduced roughly 20 or so minutes into the film, is also interesting, considering he’s the second to die, not the first. Gianni Franco’s involvement is that he is attempting to pull all the struggling mafia families together under one banner, his own. They attempt to do a protection mission with lots of marijuana or something and then Lady Tanaka’s scuba ninjas (with spiky ball shurikens) come in and kill the guys controlling the boat and most of the mafia families’ henchmen as well. Franco, along with four other mafia heads, is offered an alliance with the yakuza in exchange for money, but Franco doesn’t take it. He is lucky, as those four guys are later killed by Lady Tanaka with poisoned wine glasses (no joke). But the yakuza have taken the children of the mafia heads hostage to make them give the money that Tanaka uses for renovations or something, I guess. Onto deaths of the villains; Lady Tanaka takes a shard of glass to the forehead and falls over dead, almost having forced Franco to commit suicide to save his son. Gianni Franco takes Tommy from her and as they’re leaving, Frank sits up attempting to kill the last member of the mafia in the city. After an extended struggle, Frank manages to shoot Gianni at close range through his bulletproof vest and kill him. His son vows revenge, but after a tragic moment involving Frank pressuring the kid to kill him, little Tommy cannot bring himself to pull the trigger. And then Frank leaves to pray to God naked in a little shrine that he made in the sewers (I’m not kidding, you see it twice).

I’m not saying the movie sucks. Many people may actually find it likeable, even apart from all the complaints I’ve voiced. But the issue is how it lines up with one’s experience with the Punisher as a comic series and also whether it gives you the feel that the other two films gave you. So in all fairness, this is a comparison that might have gone better if I had watched the films in order, but I probably still would’ve found the later era films superior to this rip off of Stallone era films. Overall, the film makes me feel too young to have appreciated it as a teenager, but even so there’s the feeling that this isn’t the Punisher I experienced when I played the video game from 2005 which was my first real exposure to authentic Punisher lore and canon. I feel like I watched a movie based on the trope of a bad cop who doesn’t play by the rules. And they put the Punisher trademark in because Marvel needed more money. Avi Arad didn’t seem to be involved with this one, only Stan Lee serving as a creative consultant. The best I can say is that the movie makes a good attempt to keep the theme and general emotional response one wants from watching a film about Marvel’s most famous non-superpowered anti-hero. And if it succeeds at that, then I can only say that this is at the bottom of my list of Punisher films in terms of experience, but it didn’t kill the franchise as many claim. I may very well find that with my Hulk reviews in the future. We’ll see. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

Part 2, Ray Stevenson is the Punisher!

Punisher Warzone is deemed by most Punisher fans to be the best in the series of three, and I agree (in part). The backstory is the most consistent after two mishaps. Frank Castle now has a son and daughter with his wife. And a larger point of contention for many fans is fixed as well. Instead of the family massacre that happened in the 2004 version or the car bomb that occurs in the 1989 version, Castle’s family stumbled upon a mafia hanging of an informant and to keep them quiet, the family was murdered in the park during what was supposed to be a happy picnic. The location is also canonically in New York, contrasting with the 2004 locale of Tampa, Florida, though this by no means makes the film more or less enjoyable, since location is only part of how one appreciates and is absorbed into the film’s narrative. Ray Stevenson’s portrayal is spot on to the Punisher’s divided psyche, desiring retribution for his family’s murders and yet also showing a human side that isn’t manifest as much with Dolph Lundgren’s Punisher. And it is only so much with Thomas Jane’s Punisher described as a work on progress in the 2004 film. That Frank Castle is not the complex figure having already suffered the tragedy and worked through it in some way that the other two films present. The best part of Warzone, many would say, is the brutality and violence that appears throughout the film. Frank Castle cuts off an old geriatric’s head, breaks his wife’s neck, headbutts a guy once, apparently incapacitating him and kicks a chair attempted to be used to strike him into the assailant’s face, lodging it in his eye. There are many other points that I could elaborate on, but suffice it to say, this film is not for the squeamish. Even I (who am not weak of constitution or squeamish by nature) grimaced at the targets of the Punisher’s more physical attacks, including a guy getting his face literally punched in. I’m guessing all the gun violence has been desensitized out of me.

In terms of supporting characters to the Punisher, Microchip, portrayed by Wayne Knight, best known in Jurassic Park as the hacker Dennis Nedry, is probably the best, seconded by Martin Soap, another comic book canon figure. Microchip’s identity is consistently portrayed as someone sympathetic to the Punisher’s cause, but also in disagreement with some choices he makes. In this version, Microchip is the one that is persevering with Frank to continue his quest for justice after having already avenged his family and feeling content. But in the comic, as I recall, he eventually started to question the Punisher’s methods as too extreme and was killed off in a confrontation. But Microchip’s fate in the film is not much better. First, his invalid mother, who serves as a point to capturing Microchip for the villains, gets her head blown off and then Microchip accepts his fate to be shot and taking the bullet as Frank takes out the other captor. Soap’s involvement is similar to his role in the comic as a police informant for Frank, also manifesting his support in the film by letting Frank out of his handcuffs and out of the squad car after his capture by what appears to be Lawrence Fishburne (but he’s not). He serves a similar role that Lou Gossett Jr. does in the 1989 film as one who pursues the Punisher as a reality, though most view him as a myth. His devotion to seeking out the Punisher is only seen more clearly in his supporting Frank however he can. Though it is debatable if he agrees because he sees it as the right way or if he himself admits he is too cowardly to take the Punisher’s ways on himself. Whereas the Punisher, who lives in what appears to be somewhere near the subway, contrasting with the sewer hideout in Dolph Lundgren’s portrayal and with the crumbling apartment complex in the 2004 film, connects with few people except Microchip and Soap.

This notion of the Punisher’s detached character is tested by the involvement of a subplot where Frank accidentally kills an undercover FBI agent, widowing his wife and daughter. He later comes to make amends and befriends the little girl, while her mother is less than enthusiastic to see him. After a confrontation where Frank reflects that she is much like his late wife, knowing how to use a gun, however much she didn’t want to confront the danger of being the wife of an FBI agent, he leaves. The two are taken to Frank’s hideout and then are kidnapped after Frank seeks out his enemies. They are then used as part of a dichotomy between Frank’s desire to protect the innocent and his loyalty to his friends, Microchip in particular. Soap would’ve been an interesting replacement, but Microchip is more invested in Punisher’s cause than Soap, so his eventual death is not as much of a blow as it would be for Soap. This is because we’ve established that Microchip only had his mother left, so with her death by Jigsaw, all ties have been severed. This seems to contrast strongly with Dolph Lundgren’s willingness to partner up with Franco after Budiansky was held ransom, though there was no dilemma of choosing between two victims, so the choice was more forced and quick than in the conclusion of Warzone.

The villains in Warzone are also interesting, though it’s a balance between the added in characters and the one canon villain, Punisher’s nemesis, Jigsaw. First, consider the added in characters. Jigsaw’s brother, not canon from what I can tell, is still an interesting addition. He seems to be completely insane, being restrained in the asylum and fed by orderlies, since he is catatonic as well. But when his shackles are removed, he speaks in an oddly childish manner. He then proceeds to attack the orderly, ripping out his organs to get his applesauce back (I’m not kidding). The involvement of the character is more important later as he kidnaps the widowed FBI agent and daughter, “axing” their guardian, a reformed Mexican gangbanger who is a friend of Microchip (yes, that’s his backstory) to get through to them. And in the final confrontation, he fights Frank in the upper levels of Jigsaw’s hideout, using a very erratic and wall-jumping style to overwhelm the Punisher. But eventually he is beaten and bruised and like many Punisher villains, killed by snapping his neck in a headlock. If anything, he gave one of the better Punisher fights in the films, besides Kevin Nash as the Russian. He takes the Punisher’s beatings and keeps getting up, almost enjoying the pain as was demonstrated when he smashed the mirrors in the first floor of the building so that Jigsaw didn’t have to look at his mutilated face. The guy jumped headfirst into a mirror, so suffice it to say, he takes even Frank Castle’s beatings easily. There’s also a subgroup of villains that seem to stand out. There’s the Italian mafia, Japanese yakuza and…the African American gangs… Really? Just seems a bit beyond stereotypical to me. Even the Eastern Europeans we see are less racist a subtype of criminal.

Jigsaw’s backstory is both consistent and inconsistent, which can be bad if done wrong, though this is effective nonetheless. Jigsaw, unlike his equivalent in the Punisher video game, is Billy Russoti, and not John Saint, which lines up with the comics. His mannerisms and general behavior are near identical to Jigsaw in the comics, concerned with his looks and after the surgery, becoming a maniacal crime boss, killing his plastic surgeon after being revealed that he was pieced together, not unlike his namesake. The way he gets his face destroyed differs from the comics, where he was thrown face-first through a plate glass window, cutting up his face, but not destroying it. I will warn you, the movie portrayal is far more disturbing. He is thrown into a glass crusher that spins the glass around a center point and smashes it all up, and the ensuing activity of the machine tears virtually all his face off and supposedly even damages his facial muscles and bones to some extent. The resulting face reminds me to some extent of Mason Verger from Hannibal with his sewn together face, though at least Verger didn’t have to feel the pain as much as Jigsaw did. Jigsaw’s end in the film didn’t leave open the door for a return. This disappointed me in some respect, since Jigsaw is well known to be the Punisher’s greatest adversary and if anything, his supposed death could’ve been more ambivalent than getting impaled with a spear and burned to death. But it still ends on a nice note of Punisher violence, going beyond what is necessary and being almost torture to the villain. This is both a gain and a loss to me. A sequel to this film could’ve had Jigsaw come back, albeit not necessarily as the main villain. But who knows if the sequel with Ray Stevenson will come to be with Barracuda…

I like to say this movie is tied with Thomas Jane’s Punisher, since Thomas Jane to me is the best Punisher appearance, voice and behavior wise, though Ray Stevenson is a close tie since his brutality is very similar, even resetting his nose with a pencil near the beginning of the film after his headbutt in the opening, which made me squirm and watch it a second time. The film is the most consistent with canon as well and even portrays Castle’s backstory a bit with relation to his previous priest training, speaking to a priest in the sanctuary as if they were old friends. Microchip, Soap and Jigsaw’s appearances all make this the favorite by die hard comic fans and I would agree in that regard. But I feel Thomas Jane’s version even with the retconned backstory and other changes, still keeps the same dark atmosphere that this version gives you in spades. So until next time, Namaste and aloha.

Part 1, Thomas Jane is the Punisher!

Thomas Jane Is The Punisher (The Punisher 2004)



This was my most eagerly awaited project and the second comic book film I watched with a serious eye. The first was Daredevil, which gives you some idea of my next comic book film review, though I would need to watch it again to get reacquainted with it and the sequel Elektra. Thomas Jane’s version of the Punisher was one I looked forward to primarily because I was exposed to his voice initially in my first real exposure to the Punisher as a fleshed out character. I had read a single comic of the Punisher that I think had Warzone in the title, but I only remember that he stopped a terrorist with a fiberglass gun or something. The point is, Thomas Jane’s voice talent influenced me and probably still influences me in my enjoyment of this film, though it is still tied with Punisher Warzone in terms of overall enjoyment. Even Avi Arad and Stan Lee state in the documentary included in both versions of the DVD (theatrical and extended cut) that Thomas Jane was the only actor they had in mind when they were planning a Punisher film. Why they ignored their own judgment and hired Dolph Lundgren for the first Punisher film is beyond me, but it wasn’t Marvel Studios, so we have that much to be thankful for, I suppose.

Moving away from my apparent man crush on Thomas Jane (this is the only film I’ve seen him in btw) the backstory for the Punisher is flawed in some manner. First off, Frank Castle only has a son this time around, and the name isn’t even Frank Jr., it’s Will (though he calls him Buck for a nickname, which still confuses me). He is a Navy SEAL turned undercover agent and this background is somewhat consistent with his original backstory. And the massacre of his family is now literally all his immediate relatives and not simply his wife and kid(s). Parents, wife, son, cousins, aunts/uncles, they are all at a family reunion in Puerto Rico of all places. And due to a confusing initial plot where Frank Castle (undercover as a German arms dealer) caused the death of one of Howard Saint’s twin sons, the wife of the mafia lord wants his entire family dead. This lady is a temperamental bitch, considering all he did was kill one of her sons. I guess she doesn’t like the idea of her twins being separated, literally. The setting of the movie is also odd, as it’s explicitly said to be Tampa, Florida, completely on the south end of the eastern side of the U.S., whereas the canon comic is in New York. I won’t complain, since if anything, it makes the movie more interesting to have a new setting, but I imagine many would find this a comic book movie killer. That death being the blatant retconning of many aspects of the canon backstory of the main character. At least the death’s head is kept in this version, along with Warzone.

A subplot cut out of the theatrical cut involves Jimmy Weeks, a friend of Frank’s from the FBI, who also features in a pseudo-animated intro that involves Frank and Jimmy in Kuwait where his commanding officer is killed after not executing the “terrorists” through Frank’s judgment that they should be considered as criminals in the court of law, which affects him in the future it would seem. The subplot only involves a few scenes, one where Weeks gives Castle a watch after a goodbye party of sorts, another where he is interrogated by Saints’ thugs to give up information on Castle in order to cover his extreme gambling debts and the last where he is interrogated by Castle and eventually pressured into shooting himself with his own gun, leaving a much darker imprint on the viewer. Not to mention the movie itself is the longest of the three at a little over two hours even in the theatrical cut, the extended cut adding twenty minutes of footage.

John Saint, the remaining son, is one of three other characters related to Howard Saint in one way or another. He is apparently the identity of Jigsaw in the Punisher video game, though I dunno how this works, since I think his arm was blown off in the end of the film and even assuming he survives, he’d be an amputee as Jigsaw, which seems inaccurate with the game’s presentation. But he’s an interesting character on his own, even though he and his brother are otherwise identical. John being clean shaven and his brother having a thin mustache seems to indicate something about them. Bobby is apparently less loyal to his father and desires more independence, which causes his eventual death at the botched deal with his pot dealer (I’m serious). Although John Saint is also excessively independent from his father; apparently he attracts slutty bikini clad women, very much the playboy of the family. Quentin Glass is the right hand man of Howard Saint, though his main involvement in the story is to serve as a foil to Howard Saint for his affection for his wife. Quentin is revealed to be not only a sadist, but ironically enough, also homosexual, which only complicates his being accused by Howard Saint of sleeping with his wife due to a planted earring in his apartment. Livia is a pretty flat character all things considered, so I’ll just give you a rundown of her traits. She’s an attention whore who loves money like her husband and doesn’t appreciate anything given to her except by her husband and possibly her sons. Her death made me laugh so hard though, since even Howard apparently admits his paranoia of her sleeping with Quentin doesn’t make sense. He then proceeds to throw her off a bridge onto the train tracks where she is summarily killed. The last character to have any importance that isn’t explicitly an innocent person is Mickey Duka. He offers to help Bobby, who previously bought weed from him, with the deal to get illegal weapons in the beginning of the film. As a weasel-like character, he ducks for cover as everyone else is shot. And after being bailed out, he is nearly killed by Howard Saint, who decides that even though Mickey was the one who motivated Bobby to be drawn to his doom, his bodyguard, who wasn’t keeping an eye on him, deserved to die. Apparently he was also shot in the crotch, though that might just be me. Mickey is later kidnapped by Frank and tortured with a combination of a blowtorch, a popsicle and a slab of steak in that order (take from that what you will or watch the film). After giving up what information he has, Mickey serves as a figure similar to a Punisher sidekick in the Dolph Lundgren version called Shake, but I won’t get into details here. He aids Frank in understanding the patterns of behavior of the Saints and is the key to Frank eventually eliminating each of them in one way or another.

Howard Saint deserves his own paragraph, though I can only devote so much material to what is basically a stereotypical character. A suave, confident, and sociopathic crime boss who’s always wearing fancy suits and slicking back his hair, John Travolta does an excellent job in portraying a character that would otherwise have been a bit bland. He adds the spice necessary to make Howard Saint a compelling character who, while unsympathetic in one respect (dealing with Mexican/Cuban crimelords and killing off anyone who betrays him) he is also sympathetic in that he seems to genuinely love his children and wife, though his manifestation of this love can be quite macabre many times. Livia’s request to him after the funeral of Bobby, for example. Howard’s death is intriguing, getting shot just once, tied to his car by wires and then dragged through a lot where mines are planted under various cats, setting off a series of explosions that lights him on fire and then the car he is tied to explodes, cementing his death all the more with a pattern of exploded cars resembling the death’s head. Even if his death isn’t what Jigsaw’s is in Warzone, it still overrides even the deaths of the two antagonists in the 1989 version of the Punisher, much more toned down as you will see.

There are two other antagonists that have short lives but importance in the film as well. Harry Heck is the first, an odd caricature of Johnny Cash that carries not a weapon, but an actual guitar in the case he carries with him and is later killed by a ballistic knife launched from what appears to be a switchblade. Frank also steals his car, since Heck basically pushed him to drive the car off a rising bridge and then narrowly avoid hitting a girl, which then pushes it into a collision with another car. The Russian, a character canonized in the Punisher comics as one of his more deadly opponents, is portrayed by Kevin Nash, professional wrestler and all around big guy. The fight progresses through Castle’s apartment, smashing windows, the Russian using a pipe to bat back a grenade thrown by Castle (since apparently they play baseball in Russia) and Castle getting smashed by a toilet ripped out of the floor by the Russian as well. There’s not as much indication as in the game, but there is a Spiderman tattoo on the Russian’s right shoulder than you can see in one frame to suggest that the Russian is a fan of American comics, particularly Spiderman, which I believe is actually canon in the comics. His end is less excessive, as it takes a hint from the comics that he hates hot things, though in this context Frank was just desperate and threw a pot of boiling water that disfigures the behemoth’s face, after which the Punisher slams the Russian over the railing and down the stairs, where he breaks his neck. I almost would’ve wanted the fight to end how it did in the comic, which involved a hot pizza and the Punisher throwing his obese neighbor Bumpo’s fat ass on the Russian until he suffocated. But this is equally brutal. And that’s what counts to me for fights in the Punisher in general, if they keep that sense of tension and yet have a comicbook flair, such as one henchmen getting a paper cutter blade slammed into his forehead. Others come to mind from other films, but I’ll try to inject them in later.

The supporting characters of Joan, Spacker Dave and Bumpo deserve the second to final paragraph, since they are very much the heart of what remains of the Punisher’s humanity. Joan in particular, though altered from her shy mousy demeanor in the comics, is central, emphasizing to Frank that “good memories can save your life,” which later stops him from almost committing suicide through memories of his wife flooding back to him. She even tries to stop the odd habit Frank Castle has in this film of being an alcoholic after the death of his family. Although in this case it might be justified as opposed to if it was the death of one’s wife and children. He has literally no one to comfort him besides the drink before Joan and the others serve as a protective barrier to Frank going completely insane. Spacker Dave also serves a role of protector as he is interrogated by the sadist Quentin as to Frank’s whereabouts after getting hurt by the Russian and has each of his many piercings systematically pulled out. Bumpo’s role is less important, except as I mentioned with regards to the fight with the Russian, since he is the cook that boiled the water. Other than that, he only serves as the butt of many jokes to his fixation with cooking, threatening people with a rolling pin and at one point falling on Dave for an odd gay joke of sorts. While Frank is fixing a car in another scene, Bumpo also suggests that maybe Frank is an artist, I dunno where he got that idea (though I also can’t imagine where the Punisher found time to learn how to upgrade and fix a car in between learning Navy SEAL techs and martial arts/weaponry skills)

I’d like to clarify that I don’t imply that the other Punisher movies are below this. If anything, they have different charms to different people. If I was in an older generation, I might’ve actually enjoyed Dolph Lundgren as Frank Castle as much as I enjoyed Thomas Jane (since Dolph is the closest to the Punisher’s actual height and weight). But being as old as I am and having not been born at a point where I could’ve read the Punisher series when it started in the early 80s, I am forced to get a quicker exposure to the Punisher in the form of a video game that is consistent with a trade paperback titled Welcome Back Frank, including the Russian, Black Widow, Nick Fury, the Gnucci family and Jigsaw. While many comic book fans that are much older would say this ruins much of the Punisher’s backstory, even with Thomas Jane’s excellent performance, I see it as a retcon that keeps the Punisher relevant to today’s society. People can sympathize more with a man who lost his entire family and is driven to “pursue natural justice” than a man who merely lost his wife and kids and could be said to be behaving in a selfish manner. But regardless of how people react to my review, I just wanted to make it clear once again that these are merely my opinions and are not anything near fact, since in my whole life, I’ve read one Punisher comic, played the game twice and watched each of these movies once, including two cuts of Thomas Jane’s, which will definitely explain the length of this one. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.