Let the Crime Fit The Punisher: Analyzing the 2004 Film

Released in Spring 2004 to middling reviews, little fanfare and a lousy box office take, The Punisher is often seen as the red-headed stepchild of the Marvel films, not a good film by any measure but a distinctly vexing one, let down by a weak budget and an inexperienced director more so than being a complete fiasco. The tone, borrowed heavily from Garth Ennis’ seminal Marvel Knights run of stories, is wildly inconsistent, alternating between mean-spirited sadism and downright wacky slapstick comedy. Eventually, over-the-top ultraviolence and silliness overtake the sorry spectacle, and it’s remembered not as a high watermark in comic book film but a hiccup before Marvel Studios got their hand on the characters, and they started to actually get away from Avi Arad’s death grip. Still, there are many many things to analyze, most of which relate to the story and the choices made- some of them not good. Strap yourselves in folks, as we take a look at the very first (second I guess, if you count the Dolph Lundgren version) big screen adaptation of our favorite judge, jury and executioner rolled into one skull-faced package.

FBI agent Frank Castle, a veteran of the Gulf War, is about to retire from the agency at the ripe old age of 35, but not before one last drug bust where he puts on a horrendous German accent, dons a blonde wig on top of his dyed black hair, and has a bunch of squibs go off on his body so that random thugs think his fictional drug runner character is dead for some reason. During this raid, the son of powerful crime boss Howard Saint is killed after he waves around his gun like a dumbass, leaving no witness to the Eurotrash weed dealer’s demise anyway. Howard, not satisfied with the dude already being dead, decides to look further on the off-chance it was all an elaborate charade. He discovers the ruse and that Castle is alive and well; vowing revenge, he orders a hit on Castle and his family, which he seemingly succeeds at.

Castle survives the attempt (although his family is not quite so lucky), and comes back to revisit the wrongs he’s suffered upon Howard, as a war of two petulant, vindictive bullies begins. Castle inevitably triumphs, and in the last two seconds of the movie, swears that those who do evil to others will come to know him well; all the murderers, rapists, pimps, bigamists, slashers and sadists alike. Frank Castle is “dead”; call him vengeance, call him death, call him Shirley if you must, just don’t call him late for dinner, but he prefers that you call him by his name: The Punisher. The end, before the entire movie is dumped and he’s regenerated into Ray Stevenson three years later.

First things first: Thomas “Tom” Jane is serviceable as the titular character, but does not turn in a particularly memorable performance. I wouldn’t say his take is so horrendous, as much as I would say he’s miscast and just simply lacks the acting ability to convincingly pull off The Punisher. He seems to have a good grasp on who the character is, but his acting choices, while not inconsistent with the overall goofy quality, often come across as laughable and cheesy, not two words you want to have around such a dark property. The best you can say is that Jane is fine but not great. He’s mainly kind of ridiculous as Castle before his family’s murder, speaking with a really odd cadence that seems to be invoking what I believe they call in the Meisner method, “bad acting.” Once he turns into The Punisher proper he kind of gets into the groove and does an okay job, sort of humanizing the man and making his motives understandable. But that just isn’t The Punisher; he shouldn’t really be understandable or relatable at all.

Jane is physically in top form, although I wish they had worked less on getting his body fat percentage down to negative digits and focused on getting him as bulky and large as possible. He doesn’t have a batsuit or gadgets to get by on; it’s just him, and he needs to be physically imposing enough that criminals and normies alike run in fear just when he walks into a room. He just seems like a really in-shape dad you’d see at the gym, but too skinny to be a brick wall of hate. He doesn’t even look like he juiced! I mean, good for the criminals, bad for the fans. No one seems intimidated by him, at all, and that’s not a great thing in a Punisher flick.

There are also dumb things he has to do that aren’t his fault, but are so stupid that one’s intelligence is lowered just by watching. He’s shot three times and blown up in the origin sequence, but when he comes back, he’s not only all fixed up, there’s no trace of bullet holes. Uh… okay? He even gets his knee shot out by a bunch of goons, and is up and running with no leg problems after he soaks in sea water with the magical island native for a week or so. They kind of half-assedly show him with a walking cane when he rows to shore, then, inspired by seeing the skull shirt, he throws the cane back and can mysteriously walk again with no problems. He has arisen; It’s a miracle! Beyond that, many things distract us from an already shaky performance, such as Jane’s shoe-dye hair polish coming off in several scenes, and a myriad of badly conceived choices he has to emote himself though. All this, and he never even gets to any actual punishing until the very end!

The character of Frank Castle is written all wrong though. Ostensibly an origin story, this forces the creatives to awkwardly start Castle out at the beginning of his career, and move his military service back about ten years, in this case putting him in the Gulf War conflict. Now, I know anybody reading this doesn’t need me to remind them, but the heart of Castle’s character is that he’s a veteran. But not a veteran of just any war; Castle comes directly from Vietnam, and all the baggage and symbolism that war represented is absolutely tantamount and essential to his character. Garth Ennis, obviously, is the one who fully explored this idea by working with a 50-year-old version of Castle in order to give him a fixed timeline as a ‘Nam vet, but the idea is even kind of implicit in the character’s origins, created in 1974 in the wake of the conflict finally ending.

The best writers (ok, just Ennis) have explored the parallels of how Vietnam was viewed as a failed war, and how Castle represents the quintessential haunted veteran; one who comes back from doing his duty and is spat upon by society (in this case the reward for his service being his family murdered), and his “mission” then seems like a natural extension of his severe PTSD, embodying the haunted and wounded soul of the nation after Vietnam. One would never doubt the bravery of actual Vietnam veterans; the analogy instead is how Castle himself was such a failure at doing anything other than killing, that his war, not unlike Vietnam, never seemed to end.

You can move him to different wars and it still works, just not as well as a compelling metaphor. For example, Jon Bernthal’s Punisher in the Marvel Netflix series seems to work fairly well as a veteran of the War on Terror; again, while many soldiers have many different reactions, the central notion is that the war he returns from has to be one seen as arguably a failure and a mistake on the part of America to contrast with his character. Castle comes home not as a triumphant veteran of The Greatest Generation, but a patriot who gave his all for his country and got no appreciation, partially driving him insane when pushed past his last limit of tolerability, and partially understandable to the audience when the country itself almost went insane. It just doesn’t quite work here with him as a Gulf War vet, if for no other reason than that conflict was so short and happened so far in the past of the film timeline, as to make him seem less jaded and relatively stable at the film’s start. Castle is a man eternally on the edge, striving for conflict, seeking an outlet for his rage; he’s not a well-adjusted dude who goes berserk after one really bad day. Aging him up would probably have been the best option, or waiting a few years to do the adaptation at all.

The rest of the cast is okay, but nearly every role is miscast and some of the actors don’t just look out of place, they look downright weird. John Travolta plays Howard, who is a man of somewhat vague contradictions. Is he Italian or Hispanic? Is he some kind of a money kingpin? Is he wearing a bad wig? Beyond that, every single actor is either too out-of-shape (Several supporting characters I’ll be too polite to name- but I’m not even talking about Mr. Bumpo!), or too in-shape compared to The Punisher. Such as Howard’s weirdo greaseball son (the one that wasn’t killed), or Saint family lackey Mickey Duka (the “little prick”), whose biceps are so enormous when The Punisher’s torturing him that it’s just distracting. You want your co-stars to be smaller than Punisher if he’s already not the biggest guy on the block, not taller and more muscular!

Roy Scheider is fantastically miscast as Frank’s father, Mr. Castle, when he himself is already a dead-ringer for another Marvel character entirely: Ben Urich! Tell me that Ben, from Frank Miller’s Daredevil run, is not Roy Scheider in comic book form. What strange casting! To top it off, we even have Rebecca Romijn seemingly fulfilling the other part of her Marvel contract as Joan the Mouse, a character Garth Ennis said in the comics was supposed to be based on Jane Adams in Happiness (who later went on to co-star with Tom Jane in Hung)! The cast is rounded off with Ben Foster as Spacker Dave, John Pinnette as Bumpo, Will Patton as Howard’s consigliere Quentin Glass, Laura Harring as Mrs. Saint, and Kevin Nash as The Russian, all turning in awkwardly lousy performances. We’re missing everybody but Uwe Boll, Erykah Badu, and the kitchen sink. I think it was a case of the director not knowing how to direct rather than the actors being uniformly bad, because they all normally have real skills and all seem to be acting in completely different movies here.

Speaking of the directing, I think that’s what the biggest problem is. The director is also the screenwriter (we’ll get to that in a minute), which can work out well when you’re an auteur like Tarantino or Nolan; less so if you’re Jonathan Hensleigh. Rather than unifying the production, Hensleigh instead spreads himself too thin, utterly not up to the task and seemingly bewildered by how to direct basic scenes with any kind of visual flair. It’s instead the worst of both worlds, as since he’s also the writer, he refuses to part with any scene and the movie runs at least a half hour too long with this meandering direction. The musical score, something that could have elevated the whole thing at least on a superficial level with a string theme, is a dud, as Carlo Siliotto turns in a passable score that’s completely wrong for this particular movie. It’s not great to look at either, alternating between ugly and cheap with sets literally falling apart.

The cinematography, one thing they could’ve nailed that might’ve improved the whole endeavor, is pretty bad. Note that it’s shot by Conrad Hall. Legendary Connie Hall shoot a bad film? The master behind one of the best scenes in cinema history in Road To Perdition?? Well, no, because this isn’t THE Conrad L. Hall, it’s his son, Conrad W. Hall (much like the Bush Dynasty), and boy do you wish his dad gave him a few more pointers. There are terrible shots grade schoolers could have done a better job on; note the scene where Castle and his partner slap each other’s wrists in a high-fiver and the camera zooms-in on the bud’s wrist. Shot of Castle’s reaction: Partner’s watch is gone, therefore he must be the one who sold him out to Howard. Then the camera inexplicably zooms back in on the naked wrist, again! You don’t need a degree in film (I would know) to tell you that a film should not have extraneous shots, but this shot is so dumb because if the audience didn’t somehow make the leap in logic from the missing watch = him being dirty the first time they saw the wrist, beating them over the head with another shot of it sure isn’t going to do it!

Another cringeworthy camera move is when guitar player/assassin-for-hire Harry Heck (Mark Colley) comes to town and serenades Castle with a ditty; a member on a deleted message board circa 2004 felt Castle would’ve not sat and listened to the song but instead merely told Heck, “I don’t like your music!” and blown him away, and I concur. But anyway, Castle asks his name and Heck closes his guitar case to reveal his moniker; but it’s facing the wrong direction (kceH yrraH), so instead of sending the prop back or, I dunno, TURNING THE CASE THE OTHER WAY, the friggin’ camera pans down so we read the name backwards, then pans back up again. Okay, I see it now, Harry Heck. Why?? An ungraded student film couldn’t get away with this! It’s such a distractingly bad shot, that we forget his damn name at all at that point! As Harry says before he dies, “You are one dumb sunuvabitch!”

Everything else is a bust. The shots are cheap, the effects are bad, even the location is laughable; Frank Castle wages his one man war on crime in the seedy underbelly of- out of all places- Tampa, Florida. What?? Even Downtown LA would’ve made slightly more sense, but of everywhere they could’ve sent him, Tampa? It makes no sense and seems like the production was headed there no matter what and they had to write around it. Could be worse I guess, if it were made today you sure as hell know it would be set in Georgia, with that damn Georgia Peach logo at the end of the credits like 99% of all other action movies made in the last few years. But still, Florida?? Perhaps once his one man war on crime gets going in earnest, Castle can presumably find things to do by punishing Dr. Christian Troy on the set of FX’s Nip/Tuck in the soundstage next door at Fox Studios, with him in full makeup as Dr. Doom! Hey, they fed people to alligators on that show, I’m sure they could make it all work! He also gets into wacky hijinks with the tenants of his apartment: Jane, Dave, and the ever lovable Mr. Bumpo, where they are seemingly the only three tenants in the entire building and the police never think to look at to arrest Castle, even though Howard and The Russian find his address immediately. There’s so many other lousy touches that can just be chalked up to pure amateurishness, and the production really suffers from it.

But where the movie lets us down the most is with one aspect they should’ve nailed, and would’ve cost them nothing to fix: the story. There are many many things I could say about it, but it’s lifeless, has no structure, is full of plot holes and tropes, and exists not even as a stock “Hero’s Journey” in the tradition of Campbell but more like an homage to spaghetti westerns for no good reason. Nobody resembles an actual human being and the story just makes no sense. Its biggest falling is in trying to tell an origin story for Punisher, and then botching said origin (he doesn’t really need one, just show him fully formed and work backwards if need be). In trying to explain an inexplicable character, they just make him even more obtuse. On a personal level, I think it was absolutely wrong-headed and disastrous to have Castle’s entire family be murdered on purpose, rather than lose his wife and children through meaningless chance. And when I say his ENTIRE family, if you’ve seen the movie you know what I mean: Howard decides to kill Frank at the Castle family reunion in Puerto Rico, and as a result, his whole genealogy is wiped out, including his parents, siblings, their children, cousins, and even great Aunt Mildred and a cowardly dude who tries to escape on a bike. About 40 Castles (including kids) all get murdered to the last person. You’re left thinking, JESUS CHRIST, Howard! Overkill! To top it off, Castle’s wife and son are then run over by Howard’s goons in a shameless ripoff of Mad Max, because hey, they almost forgot to kill the immediates! Not only is it cruel and unnecessarily nasty, it kind of ruins the character and takes away from one of his central conceits, not to mention blowing a tremendous storytelling opportunity.

For one thing, I never imagine Frank Castle as having a large, happy family where he’s the lone nut in it; in books such as “The Tyger” that explore his early life, I pictured Castle as having a miserable childhood, so that when he joins his beloved Marine Corps he finds a purpose and duty that he lacked otherwise. When the war lets him down, he’s directionless and confused, but holds onto his family as the last vestige of his humanity because that’s what he’s “supposed” to do, as any sane normal man should at least. When he loses them too, he doesn’t so much snap as finally has the excuse to do what he’s always wanted: Disobey society’s laws and discard the outer sheen of rules. He rejects the notion of there even being rules he has to follow, and goes about murdering as many people as he can because he knows he will forever have a twisted justification for it. He perhaps enjoys his “work,” and that’s the ponderous moral unease one should feel when reading the best Punisher comic stories. I absolutely love that Ennis had Castle operating in “real time,” meaning that as the character first appeared in Marvel Comics in real world 1974, Ennis had Castle lose his family and become The Punisher in the actual in-universe year 1974 as well, having operated for over 30 years and killing thousands of bad guys. And this means that his family was killed literally a year or two after he was discharged from Vietnam. Right when he was looking for a purpose in the aftermath of the war, he lost everything, and one conveniently fell into his lap that he could work with. Pretty cool on Ennis’ part!

Here, when Castle’s entire extended family is wiped out, yeah, his mission seems pretty reasonable in comparison. It’s all the poor guy can do to keep his sanity; just be glad he’s not punishing normal folks! And this is where the movie lets us down- we don’t want to understand the Punisher or sympathize with his mission. He’s at his best when we can’t really understand why he does this; watching him with horror like Daniel in There Will Be Blood, but rooting for him because Preacher Eli is such a disgusting worm in comparison, that we want to see him stomped! We all can relate to wanting vengeance for wrongs that are committed against us, but Castle takes it a step too far, dialing it up to eleven to the point where we can can no longer sympathize with his actions, and start to question who the villain really is. In the comics, the simplicity of the origin is the beauty of it; Castle and his family are having a picnic in the park when they’re accidentally caught in rival gang crossfire. Unfortunate and horrible, to be certain, but not personal. This is important. Castle then thinks it’s a reasonable response to put on a skull shirt and blow away every criminal he can find for the rest of his life. It’s a fascinating character exploration the movie completely avoids. Who makes the monster; is it his nature? Castle has reasons for what he does, but they’re disproportionate to his often indefensible actions.

Ennis postulated the great theory in his run that Castle merely uses his family’s death as an excuse to do what he does; he always would’ve ended up punishing in one form or another, but had to stand behind the hypocritical veneer of justice or righteousness. He is, in short, a serial killer who targets criminals, and happened to find the perfect outlet for his urges. It’s *just* understandable enough that the Marvel Universe looks the other way, because the truth- including confronting Vietnam, and what the psychological effect of war and society’s apathy towards it brings out in human nature- is too frightening to face. The missed opportunity is in not embracing the randomness of his family’s deaths to illuminate a character study about Castle and his motives. It would’ve been perfect with the setup they already had: Good-natured John Travolta is a money launderer who doesn’t indiscriminately kill random people, and so Castle’s family could be killed by accident in a deal gone wrong. They could’ve shown Howard wracked with guilt but too consumed with greed to make it right, utilizing Travolta’s charm and charisma to sell it. In reaction, The Punisher has a completely overblown response to kill Howard and any scumbags that get in the way, leaving the fascinating moral question of who was more in the wrong. The movie doesn’t even go near there or touch that level of philosophical debate. Here, he exclusively targets Howard’s family instead of random criminals- an eye for an eye- so it becomes more of a Death Wish remake than any take that is unique or specific to The Punisher, and that’s such a shame and waste of the source material.

In fact, they muddle the narrative by having Castle be so cruel in his “ironic” punishments of Howard’s family, and then lighting Howard on fire to boot in the climax, that even this becomes hard to understand. We’re supposed to cheer for Castle since Howard is such a monster, but why did both of them resort to such extreme measures? Because the script thought it would be cool? This is not how any normal human beings would react, but the script is not deconstructing this notion so much as reveling in the gore. We’re watching 2-D characters, and it becomes theater of the absurd. When part of Castle’s elaborate scheme includes using a phony fire hydrant to make sure Howard’s wife gets parking tickets (gasp!), we’re getting up there with Lex Luthor’s scheme involving his giant jar of piss labeled “Granny’s Peach Tea.” Frank also has about a dozen opportunities to just kill Howard and the wife and son and get it over with, but wants Howard to do it himself, as an ultimate ironic punishment I guess. So when he also enacts plans such as blackmailing Quentin for being gay, so that Howard will “ironically” kill him and then his own wife for thinking that they screwed (don’t ask, it doesn’t make any sense), the movie takes on a weird, uncomfortable and homophobic aspect. What was the irony in there for Quentin and Mrs. Saint’s deaths? That their downfall should entail punishments for him being gay and her being a slut, or something? They just assume Howard goes insane and murders them, never even knowing that Castle is behind it.

In the commentary track, Hensleigh snorts that people gave him crap for the gay subplot, his reasoning being that Howard is our villain of the piece, so if he’s homophobic, this behavior is obviously being condemned. Well, in theory, but it’s not too obvious in practice. For one thing, we never get a sense that Castle himself thinks well and good of LGBT folk. After humiliating Quentin over his gayness on several occasions, you’re left with the impression Castle thinks it’s pretty damn ridiculous himself, and worthy of blackmail. Why does he think Howard will kill Quentin if he discovers his secret, unless he himself feels the same way and assumes a scumbag like Howard will be of like mind? It’s kind of a leap; Howard could be a civil rights supporter for all we know, in addition to being a wigged-out psychopath. That’s one of the problematic and dated aspects, but it was dated even in 2004. Castle in the comics wouldn’t care if Quentin was gay, he’d just kill him when his pants were down regardless.

The other problem is, even though Howard is our villain, how does that say the filmmakers are condemning his homophobia? Howard is made to look like a pretty cool guy, but the script is so all over the place we don’t really know if we’re supposed to admire him or not. Hate the sin, love the sinner? It’s very hard to gauge. But you notice DC never pulls that crap with the Joker? Obviously too insane to have a filter, the Joker nonetheless never, ever makes racist jokes, because even though he’s a madman, DC knows what side their bread is buttered on, and sure as hell isn’t going to depreciate their asset by offending the audience, logic be damned. I can’t think of Joker ever making a bigoted joke in his entire history; in fact, they usually make sure to show that his gang is multi-ethnic and inclusive, indicating the evil madman has enough wherewithal to hold no bias against anyone regardless of their color or creed, thoughtful soul that he is. Compared to old Howard, he’s practically the Racially Sensitive Clown Prince of Crime!

So what does the movie do right, if anything? (I never said it had to!) Well, it does one thing exceptionally well, which makes the rest of the movie such a wasted opportunity, because clearly the potential was there. Even though this only comprises about ten minutes of the entire bloated runtime, the movie does a great job at capturing the loneliness and isolation of a broken man after suffering an unspeakable tragedy, left unable to cope. The best scenes are when Castle is all by himself in his lonely apartment, drinking and miserable rather than cold and calculating. I liked this because it shows not only the cost punishing other people takes on the soul, but it’s also a look at the downtime of a superhero (antihero), something too few other comic book movies ever try to show. We never really saw Christian’s Bale’s Batman, for instance, dealing with the tragedies he was somehow unable to move on from in his past; he complained about them a lot, but was never at a loss for things to do. He just kind of whines, such as when Rachel dies, then has a pep talk with Alfred and gets over it, leaving you wondering why the parents thing was such a big deal in the first place!

Contrast that with one of my favorite scenes in any comic book movie, which is Michael Keaton’s Bruce Wayne in his intro at the beginning of Batman Returns. We see Keaton sitting alone in the dark in his mansion with the lights off, just utterly lost in thought and dead inside. One can almost imagine him periodically checking his watch in frustration. Then, all of a sudden, the bat signal lights up the sky and illuminates the room. Keaton bolts up, his entire posture and demeanor changes, and he snaps to attention, walking toward the light beckoning him. He comes alive and is positively rejuvenated. As Paul Dini (I believe) said in the DVD special features for the film about this scene, Wayne is utterly without purpose, perhaps pondering the pointlessness of his existence or reliving his parents’ murder in his mind over and over. He has absolutely no life outside of being Batman; but when the light comes on, he’s called to it, and belongs. He becomes somebody and has a purpose again. This was the only scene like that in that film, but Punisher is filled with scenes like those!

Beyond being a good fit for the character, they do show the sadness and quiet solitude of someone who has lost everybody and everything. Not all of us can relate to that, but sometimes we can, and our reactions are largely similar. He doesn’t have any grandiose speeches or calculating Punisher leisure activities; he just drinks too much, broods, sits alone in his shabby chair staring at pictures of his dead family. Without needing to say a word, Hensleigh and Jane convey to the audience The Punisher’s thoughts: is this what my life has become? Is this all I have left? It adds a weight and a choice to his actions later on. Sure, he’s nutty for going around playing executioner, but what else is he going to do with his life and his time now? He needs a purpose and has lost everything he would’ve lived for. Even the terrible scene where he confronts the police/DA for no reason but to stupidly announce he’s still alive (and thus lose the element of surprise) kind of shows why he chooses to be The Punisher. As regular Frank Castle in a normal shirt, he’s emasculated, half a man, a pathetic victim flailing aimless and impotent against a system that failed him. When he takes matters into his own hands by donning the skull shirt and blowing the right people away, he gives himself a point and makes sense of his world again.

And I really do love the dialogue exchange between Castle and Joan, where she tells him, “Don’t let your memories destroy you. You can make new memories; good ones. Good memories can save your life.” After he stops himself from committing sepuku because he has a flashback to a memory that never happened, his wife saying goodbye to him in the afterlife, Castle stops and reconsiders. He then leaves, presumably to go find a fulfilling life punishing more people, and stops to say goodbye to Joan, telling her, “You were right; good memories CAN save your life.” I would’ve preferred if his good memory was of the lovable doofs in the apartment, but the sentiment was there for one brief shining second. All this is mainly lost though through the sluggish narrative, and subsumed by the huge misunderstanding of Castle himself as well as the miscasting of him. It’s all a waste, because if they were going another route with the character, if they were dead-set on this direction, there was another, better choice of actor to play him, by far. It remains the most frustrating aspect of this entire production, as the right actor was indeed very much available.

Who would I have play The Punisher, circa 2004? You may laugh, but I cannot think of a better, more interesting choice than… John Travolta! And not only was he available, he’s in the damn movie as a character who ISN’T The Punisher! Now, I can already hear the howls of protest. Travolta as the Punisher?? Vinnie Barberino??? Well, let me explain. I’m not saying he was the best choice if we’re picking from any era ever, Charles Bronson be damned, just the best choice for what they had in mind and could afford for THIS movie. Although he is badly out-of-shape and paunchy here, Travolta has several things that I think really could’ve sold his take on Castle. First, he has the look. Like, exactly. He’s pretty tall, has the profile with top lighting creating the skull shadow effect around his eyes just like a Tim Bradstreet drawing, was the exact right age, and even is Italian like Castle is supposed to be. (Cue Sal the pizzeria owner motioning to the Wall of Fame, “Italian-Americans ONLY on this wall!”) Travolta also had something sorely needed for the lead: star quality. He has that in spades, and the particular baggage he has as a star- ie, known alternately for playing a hitman in Pulp Fiction, a soft romantic lead in every other movie he’s been in, a bit nutty in real life- gives him the kind of ameable, likable quality that draws you into the theater to see what he’ll do, and then could turn that image on its ear once his inner punishment comes out. He even has the same exact kind of hair as The Punisher on all of his wigs, so surely they could’ve fitted John with a slicked-back black hairpiece that matches the comic drawing to a tee!

But wait, you might say, friggin’ Travolta as death incarnate? He’s too soft, he’s a Scientologist, he doesn’t have the stare of death! Well, I’d say neither does Tom Jane, but that’s neither here nor there. I would argue Travolta’s an accomplished actor and could convincingly play it. And although this occurred years after the making of the movie, Travolta unfortunately knows all too well what it’s like to lose a child, and undoubtedly could’ve nailed that aspect. He is perfect at portraying the wounded heart of men with both a macho exterior and a soulful humanity buried inside. Check him out in Face/Off, where he portrays the dual role of both Sean Archer, FBI agent who lost his son to murder; and criminal mastermind Nicolas Cage, killing people left and right with loopy abandon. Throw ‘em together and that’s basically his test run for Frank Castle. You could see Travolta’s shadowed face wearing the skull t-shirt on the poster and know exactly what movie this was, and what we could expect it to be (a serious action thriller along the lines of Broken Arrow or The General’s Daughter). I know nowadays he’s better known for lighter fare such as Old Dogs or Hairspray or his off-the-wall portrayal of Robert Shapiro, but I’m thinking at the time people, at the time! Of all the stars available, he was the best choice.

Think about any other A-lister of the time, and it’s not even close. Someone like Bruce Willis or Tom Cruise or Denzel Washington looks even less like the character (although Denzel could’ve worked), and were even less likely to take the role. John’s acting ability is also far better than people give him credit for. And his star quality was essential to selling the vehicle and elevating the whole affair above B-movie grindhouse trash, which is unfortunately what it became. In the movie as stands, Travolta is having a fun time chewing the scenery as the bizarre caricature of Howard Saint, even managing to humanize him so much by virtue of his inherent likability, that we even kind of feel sorry for Howard by the end, or we would if he resembled an actual human being. We needed him to bring that sympathy to Castle himself, which Jane doesn’t manage to pull off at all. The kind of robotic quality Travolta brings to his performances is still more evidence as to why he would’ve worked as the killing machine lead! As for why on Earth he’s even in the movie in such a thankless role in the first place? Well, I really strongly think he actually WAS going to play The Punisher at one point, and the studio either got cold feet or wanted to go younger or John couldn’t be arsed to work out. So, they settled for offering him the villain part, hired Tom Jane, and the film’s fate was sealed. If you’re casting an unknown to play The Punisher, you surely have to nail both acting ability and physical resemblance unless you’ve just given up, which they sadly seem to have done. Thrown in the cinematic towel- as one might lament the director did from the word go.

Overall, there is a lot to admire in The Punisher 2004, yet it remains a fascinating disappointment of what might’ve been had it a better script and a higher budget. The franchise was actually rebooted YET AGAIN for Punisher War Zone in 2008, with Ray Stevenson asking on the role in director Lexi Alexander’s bonkers, Grand Guignol adaptation of the hardcore MAX run. Stevenson certainly looked the part but the film was debatably even less accurate as a Punisher adaptation (Wayne “Newman” Knight actually appears in the movie in a role that’s NOT Mr. Bumpo), so we’re still waiting for the definitive cinematic excursion. Marvel seems to have hit the sweet spot in a lot of fans’ minds with the Netflix series starring Jon Bernthal, so that’s a start. But for now, let’s pay tribute to the early-aughts filmic excursion of The Punisher and lament not what might’ve been, but celebrate all the goofy and laughable choices that still make the flick enjoyable even today, albeit in a Tommy-Wiseau-ish fashion. It’s a good use of two hours on a Sunday afternoon watch for a harmless memory, and as we know, sometimes good memories can save your life.