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.