O’Leary credited, “Unlike most modern-day movies with
comic-book origins, co-writer and first-time director Hensleigh doesn't get
carried away with CGI and incessant quick cutting, instead setting out to make
a grittier, darker and tougher tale done in the more traditional and hard-edged
style of action filmmakers like Sam Peckinpah, Don Siegel and Walter Hill. Hensleigh definitely succeeds, and handles
things with the sure hand of an old pro.”
The film was originally written to start with a
prologue set in Kuwait City during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, but the
scene was removed before filming began after told to be too expensive for a
film with a $30 million budget, which is a very modest amount for an action
film today. However, when an extended edition was made, Hensleigh went back
with illustrators and stars Thomas Jane and Russell Andrews to create an
animated version of the segment that sets up a subplot almost completely
removed from the theatrical version.
When we first meet Frank Castle, played by Thomas
Jane, he’s the heroic soldier of the Special Forces Unit during the ’91 Gulf
War. After returning from the war, both Castle and his military friend, Jimmy
Weeks, played by Russell Andrews, become FBI agents.
While working undercover as a South African arms dealer,
Castle successfully fakes his own death during a sting operation so he can
retire with his wife (Samantha Mathis) and his son (Marcus Johns). However,
during that sting operations, the twin sons (James Carpinello) of a Tampa-area
crime lord, Howard Saint (John Travolta), are killed. Along with his vengeful
wife, played by Laura Harring, Saint immediately plans to find the man
responsible for murdering his twins.
By misusing Weeks’ secret gambling addiction, Saint
finds out Castle’s real identity as The Castle Family is vacationing in Puerto
Rico. Soon Saint’s men crash the family reunion and kill almost everybody. O’Leary
said, “The massacre wipes out Castle's entire family, and by entire I mean not
just his wife, son, father (Roy Scheider) and mother, but aunts, uncles and
cousins too.” However, Castle somehow survives even though he was shot three
times and was blown out to sea, which shows no chance of surviving, but this is
a comic book adaptation.
Castle then recovers over the course of several months
with the help of a fisherman on a remote island, played by Veryl Jones. When he
returns to where his family was massacred, he finds some guns and a T-Shirt
with a skull on the front that his son gave him as a gift. The skull becomes
the sign of Castle’s vigilante as he tracks those responsible for murdering his
family and punish them.
O’Leary said, “That Castle seeks revenge is not surprising,
but he goes about doing it in ways that are a lot more imaginative than usual
in such a vengeance-is-mine movie. This
one also has a surprisingly sharp script with a lot of nice off-beat touches;
one of my favorites involves a scene where a Johnny Cash-looking assassin named
Harry Heck (real-life Country & Western singer Mark Collie) hired to
eliminate Castle walks into a diner where Castle is eating and sings him a
little ditty he wrote especially for the occasion.”
Another good part is the uncertain friendship that is
made between Castle and three other outcasts living in the rundown building
where Castle moves in to. Living down the hall is Joan (Rebecca Romijn), then
there’s Dave (Ben Foster), who has so many facial piercings, and his obese
sidekick, Bumpo (John Pinette). The friendship of these four outcasts is strangely
liking and gives this intense revenge thriller some sudden heart.
Villains are always another important part to action
films, and Travolta’s serious performance is way more effective than the way he
played the villains in John Woo’s “Broken Arrow” and “Face/Off.” Will Patton
plays Saint’s dangerous right-hand man and he steals every scene he’s in, again
showing he’s skilled at evil understatement.
O’Leary credited, “The down-to-earth villainy of
Travolta and Patton contrasts nicely with exaggerated characteristics of two
secondary hit-men heavies, the aforementioned singing contract killer and a
massive hulk called the Russian (pro wrestler Kevin Nash, formerly Diesel of
the WWF), who has an over-the-top fight scene with Castle that plays like a
great wrestling match.”
“The Punisher” is a grim, violent film about an
anti-hero who doesn’t care whether he lives or dies because a large part of him
was murdered. We the part where Frank Castle died spiritually. This is a
well-planned, well-shot (cinematographer Conrad W. Hall), and intense film, and
Hensleigh does a good job of balancing the serious action with dark humor,
while still giving enough important character moments. O’Leary pointed out, “He
also finds just the right exaggerated, yet not-too-exaggerated tone for the
material. And harking back to the likes
of Death Wish and Dirty Harry, the film is refreshing in this age of cockamamie
political correctness in the un-PC way it appeals to the righteousness of
viewers who want to see innocence protected, evil defeated and the guilty to
suffer.”
I didn’t get to see this movie in the theaters with my
siblings, but my brother liked the ending of the film where Castle is on the cable-stayed
bridge. I did hear my cousins praise this movie and it is good, which is why I
don’t understand why critics thrashed it when it came out. Don’t listen to the
critics, see the movie and judge for yourself.
You used to be able to depend on a bad film being
poorly made, but not anymore. Roger Ebert credited in his review, ““The
Punisher: War Zone” is one of the best-made bad movies I’ve seen. It looks
great, it hurtles through its paces and is well-acted. The soundtrack is like
elevator music if the elevator were in a death plunge. The special effects are
state of the art.” The only problem is that it’s disgusting.
Ebert said, “There’s a big audience for disgusting,
and I confidently predict the movie will “win the weekend,” if not very many
hearts and minds.” Here you will see a man’s kidney ripped out and eaten, a
chair leg pushed through a head by the eyeball, a roomful of men murdered by the
Punisher revolving upside-down from a chandelier and firing machine-guns with
both hands, and widow and her little girl threatened with chaos, heads
decapitated, victims impaled and pierced, and the villain thrown into a machine
that breaks glass bottles in the same way concrete is mixed.
Ebert admitted, “The glass-crushing machine caught my
eye.” Billy (Dominic West) is thrown into it by the Punisher (Ray Stevenson)
and revolves up to his neck in cutting edges while screaming a handful of
four-letter words, which given the situation, are appropriate.
Ebert then said, “What confused me is that nearby in
the same factory, there is a conveyor belt carrying large lumps of hamburger or
something. I expected Billy to emerge as ground round, but then I thought, how
much ground glass can you really add to ground round? It’s not often that you
see meat processing and bottle crushing done in adjacent operations in the same
factory. I was looking for the saltwater taffy mixer.”
Billy survives his situation and announces to his
henchmen, “From now on, my name is Jigsaw.” This is after he has surgery,
apparently only through minutes by the movie’s timeline, to fix his face with
twine. Ebert described, “He now looks like the exhibit in the entrance lobby of
the Texas Chainsaw Museum, and one eye looks painfully introspective.”
The movie is not heavy on plot. Ebert said, “By my
Timex Indiglo, there was no meaningful exposition at all during the first 15
minutes, just men getting slaughtered.” Then things slow down enough to reveal
that Frank Castle or the Punisher, who avenged the murder of his family in the previous
film, has now killed FBI agent Nicky Donatelli (Romano Orzari), Angela’s (Julie
Benz) husband and Grace’s (Stephanie Janusauskas) father, who will Never Be
Able to Forgive Him for What He’s Done, which she shouldn’t, but she will.
The film was shot in Montreal, but is set in New York,
which has a small population with only good and bad guys and not much of
anybody else. Ebert admitted, “I’d get out, too. It’s the kind of violence the
president should fly over in Air Force One and regard sadly through the window.
It goes without saying that the bad guys are unable to shoot the Punisher with
their machineguns. That’s consistent with the epidemic of malfunctioning
machineguns in all recent super-violent films.” However, the Punisher kills a
handful of henchmen with his machine guns, while spinning upside-down under the
chandelier.
Ebert asked, “Now pause to think with me. Everyone
around the table is heavily armed. More armed men bust in through the door. The
revolving Punisher is suspended in the center of the room. Because of the logic
of the laws of physical motion, most of the time, he is shooting away from any
individual bad guy. How can they possibly miss hitting him? It’s so hard these
days, getting good help.”
“Punisher: War Zone” is the third in the Punisher
movies. It follows the 1989 “The Punisher” starring Dolph Lundgren (which I
have never seen) and the 2004 film starring Jane and Travolta. Since those two
films have the same title, it’s hard to tell them apart, but why would you want
to? Ebert ended his review by saying, “My fellow critic Bill Stamets, settling
down for the screening, shared with me that he watched the 2004 movie for his
homework. I did my algebra.”
I don’t know if I can recommend this film, as I can’t
recall if that left an impact on me that I could remember. I cannot remember
exactly what happened, but maybe it was one of those forgettable films.
However, since the Punisher came back with the Netflix series and the MCU, I
think we should hopefully see the character again soon. Still, if you want to
see these films, I can say watch the 2004 film, but I don’t know about “Punisher:
War Zone.”
Thank you for joining in on “Wrestlers in Movies
Month.” I hope everyone enjoyed and stay tuned next month to see what I have in
store for everyone.
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