TB4000
04-18-2004, 10:42 AM
Written, edited, de-constructed, and chopped by TB4000
I’ll say this much for Hollywood, when they find a concept that works, they milk that bad boy for all its worth, leaving its teat painfully swollen in the process. OK, that analogy may be a little graphic, but that’s the best way to describe it. They’ve done it with African-American comedies, they’ve done it with raunchy teen sex flicks, they’ve done it with Asian cinema(which they still have yet to milk dry, but are soon on the way to doing so), and comic book movies are currently in the running along with these categories. Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of seeing my favorite heroes and villains brought to life thanks to today’s f/x wizardry, but if they’re gonna do it, I would appreciate it if they respected the material enough to do so. Currently the director of Barbershop is the newly appointed Fantastic Four director, and although I loved the movie, I’m withholding judgment until I hear from the man interview wise, to see what he plans on doing. But we ain’t talking about the future; we’re talking about the here and now. And what is in the here and now is The Punisher, the latest attempt to bring a Marvel Comics character to life. I didn’t hate this movie, I liked it in a few parts, but it similar to attempts before it, it just didn’t meet the standards you would expect.
I’m not a huge fan of The Punisher character. He was created back in the ‘70’s to cash in on those Dirty Harry/Charles Bronson type fans that were into the tales of bloody revenge at the time. He’s not as iconic as Spidey, Iron Man, Hulk, and a few more of the extended Marvel clan, and he’s nowhere near as amicable. The only thing I find interesting about him is that he’s more of the anti-hero, he fights crime, but he doesn’t let the bad guys off with a warning or have a streak of conscience when he fights…he’s there to fuckin’ kill, point blank…none of that state pen stuff, you screw up when he’s around, you may as well have your eulogy written right then and there. In the movie, he’s played by Thomas Jane, star of Deep Blue Sea, the award winning shark documentary that showed us how sharks can open and close doors like velociraptors. His family is brutally gunned down courtesy of John Travolta’s character, Howard Saint, a drug kingpin whom Frank Castle aka The soon to be Punisher worked with as an undercover agent for several years. After witnessing the crime, Castle becomes enraged and seeks to take out Saint and his family, same as he had done to him.
The world of The Punisher is not a very expensive one, as he’s one of the few Marvel characters with no superpowers…he’s basically Batman on depressants and with mad anger issues. He creates his own weaponry, and trains himself in the art of urban warfare, to take out whoever stands in his way. The movie does a good job of establishing why he becomes what he is, but the problem is that movie strays from the books a little too much. When he kills Saint’s bodyguards, he’s doing it out of self defense, whereas the original Frank Castle would just walk up to one of them and pop him without question or remorse. Here he seems a little too toned down, if you can believe that, and not that much in the vein of what the character is supposed to be about. Another issue is the intro of the three outcasts that live in the same rundown tenement that he trains in…a lovable fat guy, a goofy PC hacker with multiple piercings, and Joan, played by Mystique herself, Rebecca Romajin-Stamos. These three are basically there for comic relief, and to give the main hero someone to rescue during the climax. I laughed a few times at them, but they seemed to be tacked on for no reason other than what I mentioned earlier, which is pointless.
I will say that towards the end of the flick, when Jane fully becomes The Punisher, it starts to pick up. He starts acting more and more like the original character by that time, killing at will and not giving a damn about it. Though by that time you’ve gotten so used to his watered down version earlier it’s like a shock to the system when it does happen. The movie does give us geeks a few treats though, like Kevin Nash as The Russian, one of Castle’s enemies from the comic who looks exactly like he does in the book, and probably the best fight in the entire movie.
This being the very first R-rated Marvel film, I wasn’t surprised to see a bunch of kids in the showing I went to, though there were a few parts that actually had me flinching.
The Punisher is like the second string in the Marvel world…we know who he is, but the average person won’t recognize him like they will other characters. This reason alone is why it was gonna be so difficult to bring him to the screen, and although they tried their best, it wasn’t pulled off 100%. His character is already cliché enough as it is, and with the exception of a few parts, that’s just what this movie was.
I’ll say this much for Hollywood, when they find a concept that works, they milk that bad boy for all its worth, leaving its teat painfully swollen in the process. OK, that analogy may be a little graphic, but that’s the best way to describe it. They’ve done it with African-American comedies, they’ve done it with raunchy teen sex flicks, they’ve done it with Asian cinema(which they still have yet to milk dry, but are soon on the way to doing so), and comic book movies are currently in the running along with these categories. Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of seeing my favorite heroes and villains brought to life thanks to today’s f/x wizardry, but if they’re gonna do it, I would appreciate it if they respected the material enough to do so. Currently the director of Barbershop is the newly appointed Fantastic Four director, and although I loved the movie, I’m withholding judgment until I hear from the man interview wise, to see what he plans on doing. But we ain’t talking about the future; we’re talking about the here and now. And what is in the here and now is The Punisher, the latest attempt to bring a Marvel Comics character to life. I didn’t hate this movie, I liked it in a few parts, but it similar to attempts before it, it just didn’t meet the standards you would expect.
I’m not a huge fan of The Punisher character. He was created back in the ‘70’s to cash in on those Dirty Harry/Charles Bronson type fans that were into the tales of bloody revenge at the time. He’s not as iconic as Spidey, Iron Man, Hulk, and a few more of the extended Marvel clan, and he’s nowhere near as amicable. The only thing I find interesting about him is that he’s more of the anti-hero, he fights crime, but he doesn’t let the bad guys off with a warning or have a streak of conscience when he fights…he’s there to fuckin’ kill, point blank…none of that state pen stuff, you screw up when he’s around, you may as well have your eulogy written right then and there. In the movie, he’s played by Thomas Jane, star of Deep Blue Sea, the award winning shark documentary that showed us how sharks can open and close doors like velociraptors. His family is brutally gunned down courtesy of John Travolta’s character, Howard Saint, a drug kingpin whom Frank Castle aka The soon to be Punisher worked with as an undercover agent for several years. After witnessing the crime, Castle becomes enraged and seeks to take out Saint and his family, same as he had done to him.
The world of The Punisher is not a very expensive one, as he’s one of the few Marvel characters with no superpowers…he’s basically Batman on depressants and with mad anger issues. He creates his own weaponry, and trains himself in the art of urban warfare, to take out whoever stands in his way. The movie does a good job of establishing why he becomes what he is, but the problem is that movie strays from the books a little too much. When he kills Saint’s bodyguards, he’s doing it out of self defense, whereas the original Frank Castle would just walk up to one of them and pop him without question or remorse. Here he seems a little too toned down, if you can believe that, and not that much in the vein of what the character is supposed to be about. Another issue is the intro of the three outcasts that live in the same rundown tenement that he trains in…a lovable fat guy, a goofy PC hacker with multiple piercings, and Joan, played by Mystique herself, Rebecca Romajin-Stamos. These three are basically there for comic relief, and to give the main hero someone to rescue during the climax. I laughed a few times at them, but they seemed to be tacked on for no reason other than what I mentioned earlier, which is pointless.
I will say that towards the end of the flick, when Jane fully becomes The Punisher, it starts to pick up. He starts acting more and more like the original character by that time, killing at will and not giving a damn about it. Though by that time you’ve gotten so used to his watered down version earlier it’s like a shock to the system when it does happen. The movie does give us geeks a few treats though, like Kevin Nash as The Russian, one of Castle’s enemies from the comic who looks exactly like he does in the book, and probably the best fight in the entire movie.
This being the very first R-rated Marvel film, I wasn’t surprised to see a bunch of kids in the showing I went to, though there were a few parts that actually had me flinching.
The Punisher is like the second string in the Marvel world…we know who he is, but the average person won’t recognize him like they will other characters. This reason alone is why it was gonna be so difficult to bring him to the screen, and although they tried their best, it wasn’t pulled off 100%. His character is already cliché enough as it is, and with the exception of a few parts, that’s just what this movie was.