Punisher: War Zone (2008)

Jesus, enough with the neon.

So, after mentally preparing with the first two Punisher films a few months ago, I've finally got around to seeing the third Punisher film. The director, Lexi Alexander, promised that this is the one that finally gets it right, fo' reals this time. Third time's a charm. I don't know about that, I'd consider it the most flawed but also the most interesting of the three Punisher movies.

I've got to preface this by saying that as far as I'm concerned, the Punisher: MAX series is the definitive book on the Punisher. Some people prefer the humour of the Marvel Knights books but, from what I've read of it (and it's not much, mainly just Welcome Back Frank) I prefer Punisher: MAX which, while more serious, still has it's own brand of pitch black humour. Whichever series you prefer, Ennis' run on Punisher was consistently one of the best Marvel books on the stands, one that re-invented Frank Castle as an almost supernatural force of vengeance. A killing machine with no remorse, pity or capacity for self reflection. Most of the other Punisher books are shit on toast. And really bad toast, like moldy Wonderbread or something.

This time the Punisher is played by Ray Stevenson who played Titus Pullo in Rome. This is a bit of casting I never would have thought of in a million years, but it's pretty much perfect. He is a guy who looks big, tough and mean, but his eyes convey a lot of emotion. He doesn't say much, in fact it's a good twenty minutes into the film before he says a single word, unless you count crying in a graveyard. Don't let that crying fool you though, he's a tough bastard. I mean, have you ever reset your broken nose with a pencil? Frank Castle has. Don't mess with him.

He's introduced in a way similar to the '89 Punisher, busting into a crime boss's mansion and killing everybody. They don't waste time on the origin story because who gives a fuck? During this opening sequence you realise this movie is crazy violent. He shoves a chair leg through a guy's eye socket, cuts off heads, breaks a woman's neck and of course he shoots a whole lot of guys. During the rest of the movie a lot of people get their heads literally blown off, even a nice old lady. Some of the acts of extreme violence are taken directly from the comics, such as when The Punisher tosses a guy onto a spiked fence and then jumps down onto his head. Didn't think I'd ever see that on the big screen. He's like the Jason Voorhees of movie vigilantes.

A few other characters from the comics also make an appearance. Maginty, a black Irish dude with dreads, has inexplicably been made the leader of a gang of parkour meth-addicts. I thought there'd be an awesome parkour chase like in District B13 or Casino Royale but it didn't happen. Frank doesn't go in for that frilly shit. He's too weighed down with body armour and guns. His nerdy sidekick Micro also appears, played by Wayne Knight, and convinces the Punisher to continue his righteous work when he's ready to give up.

The villain of the piece is Billy Russo, a narcissistic mobster who gets tossed into a big open pit of broken glass during a gun fight in a recycling plant. Seems like a serious safety issue, but it's a mob-run plant so it's no surprise they've cut corners here and there. It's a pretty nasty way to go, and it's not like they cut away after a few seconds, it goes on for a while. He survives, but the surgeons do a pretty crappy job stitching his face together. I mean, I could probably do better. So he decides to go by the name Jigsaw, bust his annoying brother Loony Bin Jim out of a scary movie asylum and take over the city. Because that's what villains do.

During the battle in the recycling plant, Frank accidentally kills an undercover FBI agent. You'd think that kind of stuff would happen to him all the time, but he's pretty upset about it. He tries to apologise to the guy's wife (by giving her a bunch of money) but she pulls a gun on him. Right as she's about to shoot him the daughter comes out asking for her crayons. Talk about bad timing, is this kid stupid or what? Unsurprisingly the wife and daughter get targeted by Jigsaw and his goons (something about some hidden money, I don't know) and Frank has to try and save them.

There's also another FBI agent who teams up with the Punisher Task Force (one guy in the basement of the police station) to try and track Frank Castle down. The cops don't make it easy because they are more than happy to look the other way while Frank cleans up the streets. Even the solitary member of the Punisher Task Force (spoiler) is helping Frank. There's a pretty funny bit where a mobster surrenders to the FBI agent and out of nowhere the Punisher blows the guy's face clean off. I thought it was funny anyway. Kind of scary that we are supposed to root for this guy.

Jisaw is played by Dominic West, who played Detective McNulty in the former Official-Best-Show-on-Television The Wire. Throw a few more ex-HBO actors in there and we could have a re-union. I'm sure you could fit James Gandolfini and Ian McShane in there somewhere. West is a good actor on the show, but here he hams it up like he's a villain they cut from Batman Forever or something. There's a painful bit where he goose-steps around in dress whites, uniting the different gangs against the Punisher by giving a rousing militaristic speech in front of a waving American flag. Do we really need that goofy shit? I think the cartoony, exaggerated violence speaks for itself. I mean, the Punisher punches a big hole in a guy's face and blows up a guy with a bazooka while he's doing a cartwheel in mid-air. Now that's funny.

Lexi Alexander lends a suitably dark, gritty look to the film, but what the fuck is up with all the neon? Every single scene is bathed in it. Blue, yellow, purple, green... all the colours of the rainbow. Even when Frank visits a church it's got a big purple neon cross behind the altar, with green rope lighting running along the altar steps. A bit tacky for the house of God, I don't think he'd appreciate all that crap. Apparently it was an attempt to capture the look of the comics, but it looked more like a Vegas casino. There's also a lot of metal and thrash guitars that kick in during action sequences, I would have preferred some simple atmospheric John Carpenter style stuff but whatever.

So this is a film that gets some right (the Punisher himself, the outrageous violence) and some wrong (goofy villains, all the fucking neon). It looks like the perfect Punisher film is still some way off. I hope they make a sequel to this one (Barracuda as the villain, please) but I doubt it considering how badly it flopped. Maybe we'll have another reboot in a few years, and hopefully it will be based on Archie Meets the Punisher. Either way I'll keep watching them.

The Punisher (2004)

In Soviet Russia, Wally finds you.

So by 2004, comic book movies were big business and Marvel was busy digging up old properties to give the big screen treatment. Sadly, my dreams of a Dazzler film went unfulfilled, and instead they called mulligan on the '89 Punisher and decided it was time for a do-over. In order to get the bad taste of the first movie out of the public's mouth, they moved the setting to sunny Tampa Bay, Florida. I salute their originality in not basing it in New York like every fucking other vigilante movie, but seriously, fuckin' Tampa?

This time Thomas Jane picks up the mantle of Frank Castle. He's buff and can look pretty menacing, but he definitely looks too much like a pretty boy to play the Punisher. His acting is pretty wooden, but it's a pretty wooden character so it's a good fit. In order to pacify the nerds he wears his famous skull t-shirt this time around... apparently his kid bought it for him as a gift to ward off evil spirits or something. If I had a choice between no skull and that goofy explanation, I'll take no-skull thanks. It would have been a very different (perhaps better) movie if his kid had bought him something like this instead.

In this version of the story, he's an ex-Special-Forces undercover FBI agent. His latest sting involves getting shot for pretend, which seems like a pretty stupid plan because the criminals predictably freak out and one of them ends up getting shot for reals. Unfortunately, this criminal is Bobby Saint, son of notorious crime boss Howard Saint (John Travolta).

Howard would have probably been happy with murdering Frank's wife and kid, but he has a wife named Livia (Laura Harring) who is a real ice-cold manipulative bitch, like Lady Kaede in Ran except that she has eyebrows. She insists he send his crew of black-clad assassins to his family reunion in Puerto Rico, where they wipe out his entire family. Cousins, uncles, parents, everybody. People try to escape on foot, on motorcycles and even dinghies (that guy must have been really desperate) but the bad guys chase them down and shoot them. Frank's wife and son try to escape in an SUV (with a boat on a trailer still attached!) but eventually they are chased onto a pier and the bad guys run them over in their truck. Then they shoot Frank and blow up the pier. As far as revenge goes, it's pretty harsh. I guess murdering the wife and kids isn't X-treme enough for the Mountain Dew drinking kids of today.

Frank washes up on shore and is nursed back to health by the local witch doctor, and it's from here that Frank enacts his elaborate plan for counter-revenge (he says it's "punishment", but we all know it's revenge Frank, who do you think you're kidding?) He enlists the help of Mickey (Eddie Jameson) one of Saint's low-level flunkies, to frame Saint's second-in-command, Quentin Glass (Will Patton), and make it look like he is having an affair with Saint's wife. Quentin's gay, but Saint doesn't know that. After Saint stabs Quentin to death and tosses his own wife in front of a train, he goes for a drink at his nightclub with all his henchmen, and that's when Frank kicks things into high gear. Needless to say, all the bad guys ends up punished, especially Saint. This is a pretty good act of re-revenge, but I can't help but feel it doesn't seem like a Punisher story. The REAL Punisher would just walk in and shoot Quentin, Saint and Livia in the face.

During Frank's criminal rampage, he takes up residence in a crumbling apartment building that comes with free comedy sidekicks and a damaged love interest. There's a fat guy who loves food and opera, a weaselly guy with lots of piercings and low self esteem plus a woman with terrible taste in music and a string of violent ex-boyfriends. She mentions how she always manages to fall in love with the guy who treats her the worst, and considering she immediately falls for a guy nick-named the Punisher, I'd say she's pretty much right. They teach him the meaning of friendship and family and cook a meal for him. I don't know, it's pretty cheesy.

As Frank and Saint's war escalates, Saint enlists a couple of colourful assassins to try and take him out. One of them is a Johnny Cash motherfucker who walks into a diner where Frank is eating and then pulls out a guitar and sings him a song. Then he says "I wrote that song for you... I'm going to sing it at your funeral" and walks out. Pretty awesome. Would have been cool if he just disappeared from the movie for a while, but tries to kill Frank in the very next scene. The other assassin is a big-ass dude in a goofy striped shirt with bleached hair. He's known only as "The Russian" and the first time we see him is when he suddenly busts into Frank's house and starts beating the shit out him. I don't think he ever speaks a word.

The film is directed by first-timer Jonathan Hensleigh. I like that everything is shot in a very down-to-earth, old-school action style. No shaky camera, no music video quick-cuts. It's very refreshing to watch a fight and be able to tell who is punching who. There's a good bit where Quentin Glass menaces the pierced guy with a pair of pliers. It's pretty scary, and they draw out the tension in a way that you don't see too often these days. There's a few bits that didn't work for me, though. There's a Leone homage that's pretty groan-worthy, and there's a fake-looking bit where Castle blows up dozens of cars to create a big flaming Punisher logo. I don't know what the owners of those cars did to deserve that, maybe their parking permits were expired.

This film seems to have a bit of an identity crisis. Comic relief jostles uncomfortably next to serious moments. In some places it's sadistic and violent, but not in a fun way like in Shoot 'Em Up. In Ennis' Punisher: MAX comics, he knows how to ratchet the violence and sadism up to such an absurd level that it becomes funny again. Here it just seems out of place. No doubt this film was supposed to spawn a franchise, but I guess it didn't happen because here we are just a few short years later and they've decided it's time for another do-over.

The Punisher (1989)

Why yes, this film was made in the 80s.

Dolph Lundgren is a pretty interesting guy. If all you knew of him were his film roles, you'd assume he was just a big dumb action movie actor. You'd be wrong (and a bit prejudiced too... actors are people too, man. Have a bit of respect.) Here is a strapping 6'5" blonde who is a world class karate champ, speaks five languages and has a Master's Degree in Chemical Engineering. I'm not a supporter of Nazi eugenics (how's that for a qualifying statement) but I think Dolph Lundgren makes a pretty good case for the Master Race.

In this version the Punisher wears head-to-toe leather and combat boots, accessorising with knives and ammo pouches etc. He doesn't have the big skull emblem on his shirt, which isn't a big issue for me but it's pretty funny because that's the only thing separating him from any other garden variety vigilante. They've dyed Dolph's hair black and to be honest it looks pretty stupid. He's also got a five o'clock shadow that looks like it's been painted on. That, along with his pasty skin and unkempt appearance, makes him look like a guy playing dress-up at a comic book convention. Minus the beer gut. However, he's a pretty big dude and when he's fighting he looks pretty skilled and intimidating.

The film opens with a news report ("Channel 5 News - All Movie Exposition, All the Time") that fills us in on the Punisher's rampage. His killing spree has been going on for about 5 years, and in that time he has killed about 125 people. Over the course of the film he racks up about the same amount in a couple of days, which means he's really been dragging his ass over the last half-decade. A mafia Don's trial is acquitted and he brags to the press that he is untouchable. Of course, the Punisher busts into his fancy mansion and kills everybody before blowing it up. It's a good introduction.

They don't spend a lot of time on Frank's origin, which is good because it's pretty standard fare. It's been changed a little from the comic book, but the end result is pretty much the same. Family killed by criminals... goes on vigilante rampage. In this version, Frank Castle was a police officer instead of a Vietnam vet, and his family was killed by a car bomb instead of being executed after witnessing a mob hit. His former partner Jake Berkowitz (Louis Gossett Jr.) is now head of an anti-Punisher task force and is convinced that the Punisher is Frank Castle (who is believed dead in the explosion that killed his family).

Now, I'm not the kind of guy who reads homosexual subtext into everything and then giggles at every little innuendo. Okay, maybe I am. Still, the way Berkowitz single-mindedly pursues Frank really makes me wonder. This reaches a high note when Berkowitz, on the verge of tears, shakes Frank by the shoulders and shouts "Let me in! Let me in!" After the Punisher spurns his tearful plea, Berkowitz's new partner (female, by the way) tells Frank that Berkowitz lives for him and asks him "how long can someone live after you've cut out their heart?". Enough with the homoerotic melodrama. What is this, a John Woo film?

Okay, five paragraphs in and I haven't even started on the main plot. Basically, Frank's crime spree has weakened the mafia and left them vulnerable. The Yakuza, led by Lady Tanaka (Kim Kiyori), swoop in and take over, demanding a 75% cut of all the mafia's crime operations. They refuse, so the Yakuza kidnap all of their kids and hold them for ransom. Regardless of whether the mafia pay up, the Yakuza are going to sell the kids into slavery, so the Punisher steals a school bus and heads in to rescue them. It's like Warbus except it's in New York instead of Vietnam and he's fleeing the Yakuza instead of the Viet Cong. Actually I guess it's pretty different, I just couldn't let go of an opportunity to mention Warbus.

Because the bad guys are Yakuza and it was the 1980s, they try to cram in as many Japanese stereotypes as possible. The Yakuza have a kendo school at their headquarters and Lady Tanaka does a Geisha dance and spends the whole climax of the movie in full makeup. And of course, there are lots and lots of ninjas. The Punisher even gets ambushed at Coney Island and a bunch of ninjas with machine guns come racing down a big slide. "Wheeeee! Last one to the bottom has to polish all the shuriken!" Lady Tanaka has a mute American adopted daughter, who has all these hidden knives and shuriken earings and things.

So with all these blades and guns, you'd be pretty annoyed if you ended up with some sissy PG-13 film, but luckily they pushed the R rating pretty far. At one point Lady Tanaka ambushes a bunch of the mafia gangsters at a restaurant. At her command everybody else at the restaurant (old ladies, young couples, bespectacled accountant-looking dudes) pulls out a piece and blows away all of the gangsters' bodyguards. This is after she'd poisoned the gangsters by the way. That's the kind of overkill I'm hope for when I go into a film named The Punisher.

One more thing that is really worth noting, when the Punisher isn't out Punishing, he hangs out in the sewer butt naked and surrounded by candles and mumbles to God. Didn't Jesus suffer enough on the cross, Frank? Don't make him look at your wing-wang too. So they kind of botch the tortured loner thing, especially since he has a comedy sidekick, a homeless Shakespearean actor who talks in rhyming couplets, which probably looked better on paper. At one point the Punisher lures him into an alley with a bottle of whiskey attached to a remote control car. Pretty elaborate plan, why couldn't he just whistle?

Okay, I'll come out an say it... I kind of liked this stupid film. It is extremely 80s with enough ridiculous touches (ninjas on slides, Berkowitz emotional plea, naked prayer) to kick it over the line of enjoyability. The Punisher... not particularly punishing.