The Punisher
by Tom Spurgeon

It says something about pop culture right now that the only entertaining moment in the latest film version of The Punisher traffics in 1980s cheese rather than 1970s grit. In a scene for the ages, greasy assassin Harry Heck (from Memphis, noted home of the killer elite) walks into a diner solely inhabited by the film's good guys. Pulling out a guitar, Heck sings a mournful ballad all the way through. "I'll play that song at your funeral," he drawls in our hero's direction. One imagines that at this moment most of Heck's victims fall on the floor laughing, where they are quickly dispatched. It is a mighty piece of acting from star Tom Jane that he stares ahead glum-faced as if he's in a Jim Jarmusch picture.

Jane is mostly good like that, sort of a Christopher Lambert you don't want to slap every time he talks. In the movie's duller stretches, the viewer may daydream of pulling up in an unmarked van and spiriting the actor away to a better film. Secret origin cannon fodder Samantha Mathis, with her crinkly eyes, and Will Patton, who plays every bad guy role like he's appearing in an episode of Red Shoe Diaries, can come along, too. The trio could do a fine True West.

The rest of the cast has to stay, in a horrible world of action movie logic where people drive their cars out of their driveways at 80 miles an hour, women not yet 40 have children older than 30, the only black people you see practice voodoo, and John Travolta is never asked to do a second take. It's a world that looks like it cost $62.00 horizon to horizon, managing the stupendous feat of making Tampa (aka Gulf Coast Akron) look smaller and more rinky-dink than usual. The film, directed by Jonathan Hensleigh, exudes such a brazen shoddiness that one begins to have Ed Wood-style visions of its creation, production assistants rifling through the garbage behind the WB, building a soundtrack of operatic white boy shit rock from cuts that failed to make the latest Angel radio ad.

Sadly, nothing that lurches off the screen feels even that remotely fun or improvised. If one thing has changed since the earlier film version starring another blonde with a dye job (Dolph Lundgren), it's that Marvel Comics movies embody, rather than aspire to, generic big-movie mediocrity.

Now that the character has spawned two movies that could be projected into a building to help end a hostage crisis, it's safe to argue that maybe we should expect pure ass from a comic book version of the grocery store action novel. The Punisher made his original impression on comics fans during a brief period when someone sporting pistols with intent to kill, say, Spider-Man, felt like an exciting violation of accepted funnybook standards. He also had a great costume designed by one of Marvel's unsung art heroes, John Romita Sr. Neither of these things really translates to film, particularly the famous skull shirt chest emblem. Onscreen it becomes a somewhat dubious gift from the lead's soon-to-be-murdered child in a moment that in real life would have everyone scurrying to speed-dial the family counselor. But hey, it's that kind of movie -- a bad one.

Right before the credits, the Punisher stops on a bridge to stand outside his car and pose, for no particular reason except to violently think through his raison d'etre. It's not exactly Sanjuro, or even Heroic Trio, but I like the idea, and I hope no one minds if one morning I stop traffic on the 520 to face an imaginary helicopter film crew and mentally project how intensely my life will now be dedicated to avoiding lousy movies like this one.

©2004 Tom Spurgeon
CineScene