The Punisher (2004)

The Punisher (2004)

The Punisher. For those who are not familiar with the character, the backstory is quite simple. Frank Castle, Vietnam veteran, stumbles across a mob execution in a central park, (where all mob hits happen apparantly) with his family. In the crossfire, Castle's wife and kids are brutally killed. Feeling that he has lost everything, Frank (with a nice looking death's head shirt) declares war on all crime, and decides that he will punish criminals for what he has lost. He becomes "The Punisher"

Thats the character from Marvel comics. Pretty simple backstory, but a ton of story potential. The Punisher cropped up on animated series (Spider-Man:The Animated Series) with only minimal tweaking to his personality, and starred (portrayed by Dolph Lundgren), in a movie in 1989, called ...err..., The Punisher. Both these portrayals were fairly similar to the original Marvel comic character.

The Punisher (2004) gives the Punisher a good stretch of time in giving him his origin. Because he's fairly young in this film, mid thirties maybe, the Vietnam aspect is removed and replaced by Castle (Thomas Jane) being a FBI agent. In the course of a sting operation, the son of evil businessman Howard Saint (John Travolta) is killed. Saint doen't appreciate this, and at the urging of his wife, has an attack on Castle, and his family planned. Castle's entire family is killed. Not just wife and children, but his Mother, Father, various Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, Nieces, Nephews, and anyone else around at the time is killed. Of course Frank survives and takes up his revenge upon Saint and his family. (And with a nice point, he does so only when the official system has failed. He gives law and justice time to do the work for him. Only when he sees there will be no justice from the system, after five months, does he pursue what he calls, "natural justice")

I know an awful lot of people who do not like this movie. A lot of them are disappointed that Frank doesn't just pick up a gun and go a blazing away. Instead he is smart, playing off members of the Saint family and organisation against themselves so they do all the fighting. In fact, for a movie called The Punisher, there is a lack of intense gunplay scenes. There are only two extended battle scenes, the first is the killing of Castle's family, and the second is the final attack on Saint. Various other scenes crop up but are not dwelt on as much. There is one other fight scene worth mentioning, and that is the fight between Castle and the assassin called "The Russian" played by WWE Wrestler Kevin "Diesel" Nash.

Castle, in a great move by director Jonathon Hensleigh, spends the movie punishing the Saints, not just executing them. It is remarkable that an action movie, and a comic based action movie at that, has that much thought put into its construction.

The Punisher, is a very faithfull adaptation of the character of Castle, and while it did alienate the action-loving audience who don't care to dig deeper into this movie, it has hidden depths, and is well deserving of the four Darios I am awarding it. It has two other positives. The score is great and the original song by Mark Collie "In Time" is brilliant.

Unfortunately, The Punisher was "rebooted" in 2008 with Punisher:War Zone, which was designed precisely to appeal to the action crowd.

Four Darios

Official Trailer (From Youtube) :