Originally published January 2016

Back in 2004, superhero movies were a very different thing. Christopher Nolan hadn't changed the way people saw Batman since the schlock of Batman & Robin, and many movie studios were wary of getting into that business because it wasn't a sure money-maker yet. Superhero movies, in particular Marvel's superheroes, were certainly a thing, thanks to the success of X-Men and Spider-man, but they were far from what they've become today. The characters, the formula, and even the tones of the movies were very different. Marvel has since hit its stride with the Avengers and the movies pertaining to those characters within the Avengers, and with the Disney empire looming over them, the properties and their lore are tightly controlled. However, at the time, Marvel was willing to let different studios take different franchises: Fox got X-Men, Sony got Spider-man, and Lionsgate got The Punisher.

The Punisher (2004) is one of those movies that, when it originally came out, I sort of liked it, but I felt like I was giving it the benefit of the doubt. There weren't many other superhero movies out at the time that were very watchable, so its competition wasn't really stiff. It seemed loyal enough to the source material and it certainly wasn't trying to be boring, so I gave it a passing grade. Now, it's recently come on Netflix instant streaming, and having watched it again in this post-Nolan-Batman world where even Superman has to be brooding with a ton of dark thoughts on his mind, The Punisher seems surprisingly light. I mean, the guy's bloodline (not just his parents) is wiped out, and he seeks revenge, but the tone of the movie stays relatively light-hearted considering the source material.

The tone isn't the only issue this movie has, however. Having watched it again recently, I realized that it falls into that ambiguous territory for me of being not terrible but not good. Time for a Fair or Foul review.

Foul: The Villain

Let's start with the biggest problem this movie has. I like John Travolta, especially when he's playing a crazy villain in a John Woo movie like Face Off or Broken Arrow. Here, however, he "plays" a mob boss with a very peculiar personality. I say that he "plays" the role because he's really phoning it in here. In the scenes where he’s supposed to be angry, it seems pretty subdued. In the scenes where he's supposed to be menacingly scary, he looks bored. He even gets the chance to drop some terrible puns at the end of the movie, but he just says them so nonchalantly that it seems pretty clear that he didn't want to be there.

It's a little ironic, considering the fact that Travolta was probably the biggest name attached to this movie, yet his role does the most damage to its enjoyment. It's not entirely his fault, though. The role itself is not great, which might be why he didn't try very hard.

His character, Mr. Saint, is supposed to be a mob boss who launders money for other mobs and takes a small cut for himself, I guess. I don't know his specialty, but that seems to be the main thing he's responsible for. Regardless, on several occasions, his alleged power is put into question. In one scene, we're told that he's capable of screwing up anyone's life severely, which he certainly does to Frank Castle, the main character. Then later, with another pair of mob bosses present, he's downgraded a bit and seems like more of a small-time mobster.

It's not just his impact on the imaginary crime world or lack thereof, his personality is also really weird for this type of character. In order to run a crime syndicate and have a bunch of guys work under you, there has to be something to buy the henchmen's loyalty. If it's money, this guy doesn't have a lot and is foolish enough to keep it in one place within the US, which the Punisher manages to screw up. If money isn't it, typically it's fear and power. Well, we've established that his power is somewhat limited, so maybe it's fear.

Except he's not scary. He has a happy marriage with his wife, where he'll do anything she asks. He adores their sons and reminisces about one in particular about how he helped dress his boy till he was a teenager like a sensitive family man. When one of his sons is killed in a botched sting operation that involves Frank Castle, he seeks vengeance, but his wife is the one who demands that Frank Castle's entire, extended family is murdered. She doesn't just a single loved one dead, she wants the whole Castle lineage wiped out, as though her son was so special, and her obedient husband obliges her. She is more menacing than he is. Yet, she's barely in the movie after this.

Instead, Travolta is supposed to be the primary antagonist who really does nothing other than sit on his thumbs while the Punisher goes around screwing up his business. He has his right-hand man investigate things, who is also supposed to be menacing, but meh. Maybe it's the fact that he works for Travolta's character, but he is nothing special either. They both just end up being boring guys who are less interesting than their henchmen.

Fair: Thomas Jane

Thomas Jane has always been an actor that I've felt was right for a gritty role. With his butt chin and chiseled abs, he always seemed like a decent alternative to Arron Eckhart. He's still not an amazing actor, but he helps The Punisher a hell of a lot more than Travolta. He seems to embrace the role and does his best to brood like a man would after his family is killed, even if it goes a little over the top at times.

I think part of the reason that Jane manages to be a positive for the film is that he manages to salvage a rather bland, kind of dumb character. Jane plays Frank Castle, a guy who is supposed to be an undercover specialist, fluent in numerous languages and capable of blending in. In the very first scene, I don't believe that statement because he sticks out like a sore thumb, and he certainly doesn't try later. After his family is murdered and he is presumed dead, he has the opportunity to haunt the saints and give them a fair amount of grief as an unknown threat. Instead, he announces that he's still alive to them immediately and even goes on TV. He does very little to keep a low profile throughout the movie and it ends up causing trouble for the side characters later on, showing that he learned very little from the deaths of his family.

Despite the frustrating foolishness of his character, who doesn't have enough of a backstory explained or enough characterization early on in the movie to justify his abilities and strategies as the Punisher, Thomas Jane fits the build. His physique and subtle charm carry the role a long way and I had little trouble accepting him as the Punisher, despite having trouble accepting the character overall. His hair looked kind of dumb though.

Foul: Soundtrack

Whoo-boy. This movie is definitely from the early 2000s; the soundtrack consists of mostly the crappy music I was listening to in high school. It has a lot of that nü-metal garbage that was pitched toward the angsty teenagers who want to watch a superhero who goes around shooting up mobsters. The soundtrack tries to make The Punisher all edgy, angry, and volatile, but it just ends up being laughable. It further screws with the tone and limits its audience to a particular niche, which is probably part of the reason why The Punisher didn't do well in theaters.

Fair: Action Sequences

I say fair, but it's more of a barely passing fair. The action is all relatively bland, with a few exceptions. Even the final sequence is somewhat uninteresting and uneventful.

The scene with the guitarist hitman, brief as it is, is cool. It starts with a weird moment where the guy serenades the Punisher in a diner with his guitar, but the short car chase across a drawbridge is fun to watch. The problem with this scene is that it shows the low budget of the film; it should have been a longer car chase and a lengthier gunfight that was over all too quickly, considering the amount of emphasis they placed on this one hitman.

The best part of the movie is the fight sequence between The Punisher and the hulking Russian hitman. The tone of the fight is weirdly comical with the background music playing, but what takes place is pretty fun to watch. Both guys are going through walls, explosions are going off, and they're using various tools of the environment to beat the crap out of each other. If this was the only part of The Punisher you saw, you might think that there was potential for a good movie here, despite the background music choice.

Foul: The Big Plan

We've already established that the Punisher is no genius and he doesn't seem to learn from his mistakes. That doesn't keep him from coming up with a diabolical method of getting revenge on Mr. Saint. His ultimate plan? Make it look like Saint's wife is cheating on him with his right-hand man, then physically attack him at his primary office.

I've never read The Punisher comics, but from what I understand based on the various other Marvel mediums he's joined, he's not supposed to be a big schemer. The only thinking he did was the most efficient way of getting into a room and killing everyone, there was very little scheming about making the villains turn on each other. I don't mind that the filmmakers tried to do this, as they should be able to interpret the role as they like, but if they're going to have him come up with a scheme, how about one that's a little more complex, reliable, or worth our time?

I won't go into the details of how this plan is accomplished. Just know that there are a lot of conveniences and character contrivances involved to make it all possible. It actually further worsens the villain because it's all based on his character's alleged jealousy. We're told that he gets jealous of anyone admiring his wife, but we're not shown enough to believe that he gets jealous easily. If anything, we are led to believe that the one person he would trust his wife with would be his right-hand man because he tells his buddy to dance with her while they're at a club. Even though his leering at their dancing is meant to insinuate that he's the jealous type, it's not enough, and he's still the one who told them to dance.

This forced behavioral trait that we're supposed to accept, along with the speed at which the villain turns on his loved ones is wholly unbelievable and makes the plan seem really stupid and pointless. The time would have been better spent coming up with a method of hunting down and scaring the villains in malicious ways before eliminating them than coming up with this overly elaborate scheme that depends on the inconsistent behavior of its victims.

Fair & Foul: Tone

The tone of this movie is a real mixed bag. On one hand, it doesn't fit at all with what takes place. Some light-hearted comedic things is happening during one of the biggest fights of the movie and most of what occurs takes place in the well-lit daytime with very few actual somber or melancholic moments. The big scene where Castle loses his family is more action than anything else, so when it's supposed to be sad, there's not much emotion there. I felt worse for John Wick losing his dog, and Wick was played by living mannequin, Keanu Reeves.

The Punisher just doesn't dwell. There's not a whole lot of time that it spends on anything in the movie, except for the fight with the Russian, which may be the reason I like that part. Is it trying to tell a complex story? The Punisher has an even less complex story than Batman: He's just a dude who lost his family, went a little insane, and decided to kill people because he didn't think the law could do it. Which brings up another thing about this film.

There's only one scene in the whole movie where Frank Castle's opinion of the law and its failings come into play, and that's over real quick too. The movie is in a rush to get to the next thing, but when that next thing happens, there's not much that occurs and we're on to the next. It keeps the movie from being boring because the plot is moving, but since nothing is actually happening, it keeps the movie bland and the depth is sucked out of the movie. By the time Castle gets his revenge in his overly elaborate way, I didn't care and I didn't feel like he did.

The one thing I will say about the tone that I do like is that it just stands out because of the fact that it's not another Batman clone. Ever since Christopher Nolan redefined the brooding hero formula, movies about characters like the Punisher have been so brooding and so dark, that it's actually nice to see such a time-capsule of a movie before that time; one with a bleak subject matter maintain a colorful and upbeat attitude. It's still serious most of the time, but not nearly as serious as it would have been, had it been released 2 years later.

Conclusion: Foul

The Punisher has a few interesting traits that make it a mediocre hero film worth seeing, if only for the fact that it's an early superhero movie of the millennium before Batman came along and darkened everyone's day. It's a film that doesn't scream terribly like some of the comic book hero movies that came before it and after it. However, The Punisher falls into foul territory due to ambitiously misguided story-telling, bland action, tone and character inconsistencies, and a shitty villain. I wasn't bored when I watched it, nor was I overly put off by it, but upon reflection of this middle-of-the-road film, I know that I have no interest in ever watching it again.