It's time for even the most rabid fanboy to admit that the Marvel comic-book-to-feature-film craze has come full circle, from miserable adaptations (1991's Captain America starring J.D. Salinger's son, The Punisher) to quality work (Blade, Spider-Man, the second X-Men) and back again (Daredevil, The Hulk, The Punisher). The movies saved Marvel, once on the brink of extinction after years of mismanagement; they gave the company Wall Street credibility and Hollywood currency, to the point that every single Marvel property is currently in development at some studio somewhere. (Next up: The Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Man-Thing, Namor and myriad others with even more obscure heroes.) There is even a Punisher 2 in the works, when one is more than enough.
The Punisher would be almost offensive were it not so inconsequential. There's just something terribly off-putting about a movie in which every gruesome death is a punch line, where a villain's homosexuality is used to lure him to his death and dozens of innocents are gunned down just to launch a film franchise. And while it may be obnoxious, messy fun in the name of cheap thrills--the "shallow, primitive work" that gives the audience "a terrific kick," as Pauline Kael once wrote about the Charles Bronson revenge movie Death Wish--it's also galling, considering that Marvel will also make extra coin off the movie's attendant merchandise, especially The Punisher's skull T-shirt, which every kid will have to own. But The Punisher comics, of which there have been copious variants over the years, aren't meant for kids, no more than this movie is fit for adults; so, hellooooo, comic-book readers.
The Punisher is less movie, anyway, than video game, with its puzzle-piece plot contrivances and third-person shoot-'em-ups; Thomas Jane, with hair dyed the color of Firestones, even possesses the limited expressions of an animated character going through the joystick's motions. After watching his entire family killed--including father (played by Roy Scheider, who lost all that jazz), wife (Samantha Mathis) and son--during a beachside family reunion, Jane looks more bored than distraught; the dead get more enraged. Even more confusing is Castle's disappearance after the massacre, during which he's severely wounded. He returns some months later sporting a beard but looking no less buff than before the shooting; even on crutches, he's still doing stomach crunches.
Hensleigh, who co-wrote the movie with Hulk's Michael France (wuh-oh), has succeeded in making that shallow, primitive movie of which Kael wrote. It exists solely so people can get shot, stabbed in the throat, pierced with arrows and blown up; the filmmakers at least keep finding interesting ways for people to die. But as the bodies stack up, The Punisher drains of emotion. How are we supposed to feel anything when all we're seeing are extras massacred on a movie set? Thomas Jane, as an actor, hasn't given us anything to feel; he's all façade, a blank stare on a handsome face perched beneath a bad dye job. So Frank Castle, the character, is nothing more than a weapon, a gun that keeps going off till its chamber is empty. When he's spent, so's the movie--but not the audience, which couldn't care less about anyone on the screen.
Travolta is no better, playing yet another slimy caricature in yet another career move that erases the audience's good will; the role could have been played by anyone and often feels like it's occupied by no one. Will Patton, bless him, is once more cast in the role of the gay villain who's forced to come out of the closet just so someone can kill him; his Quentin Glass is a rehash of his role in No Way Out, which is how he must feel right about now. And poor Laura Harring, who is cast in the role of Travolta's conniving wife, the woman who orders the hit on Castle's family to begin with after the death of her own son. Roles like this are why people keep referring to her as "the woman in Mulholland Drive who wasn't Naomi Watts." Docked extra points for its dreadful sludge-rock soundtrack, featuring Nickleback and Drowning Pool. They all oughta be punished.
