If society won’t punish the guilty, he will.
Five years ago, Frank Castle’s family is killed by members of the mob. Assumed dead after the attack, this former police officer begins taking matters into his own hands, systematically decimating all the different mafia organizations until they become weak and powerless. During this time, one of his former colleagues at the police department, obsessed with the idea that the man known as “the Punisher” is still alive and taking his revenge against the mafia, begins to hunt him, following his trail of bodies all over the city. Over time, the mafia grows so weak that the Yakuza invade their territory, demanding their services for a fraction of their original profits. Naturally, since they’re dealing with a bunch of stubborn Italians who tell “the nips” to go fuck themselves, the Yakuza respond by kidnapping all their children in reprisal. Now it’s up to one man to get those kids back – including the son of the man indirectly responsible for the death of his family five years ago. As could be expected when dealing with both the mafia and the Yakuza, it ends in a hail of bullets, blood, and lots of sharp, flying, Asian instruments of body-hurt when Castle and enemy-closer Gianni Franco strike an uneasy alliance and storm the Yakuza’s high-rise headquarters in an effort to rescue Franco’s kidnapped son and put down the murderous organization for good.
The Punisher, one of the first attempts in bringing a prominent Marvel Comics character to celluloid, was directed by Mark Goldblatt, who continues to work today as an editor on big Hollywood films, but who only ever directed two features. (One of them is 1985’s oddity Dead Heat – yeah, the one with Joe Piscopo). More interestingly, it was written by Boaz Yakin, who is still working as a screenplay writer, and who has contributed several quality concepts to the action genre since The Punisher, his first script. He’s also been enjoying a career as a director, responsible for Remember the Titans and the Jason Statham action romp Safe. (He also wrote the dreadful Now You See Me.)
Despite being intended for a theatrical debut, New World Pictures’ financial troubles forced them instead to debut the film on video, which is a shame, as the experience of seeing Dolph Lundgren tear ass across organized crime syndicates would have not only for a great theatrical experience, but would have also been one of the rare theatrical debuts in which he played the main protagonist. The best aspect of The Punisher (putting aside how “loyal” it is to the source material) is that the action hardly ever lets up. Too often, films with sure-thing pedigree and potential fall short of being thrilling because of their unfortunate and too-long passages where nothing happens beyond people hanging around and looking angry (looking right at you, Raw Deal and Death Warrant). The Punisher opens with carnage, closes with it, and fills the entire glorious middle with non-stop falling bodies. And even though the neutering of The Punisher's more grisly scenes have since become the stuff of action-junkie heartache (this situation was not helped when the director hosted a public screening of his work-print version several years ago that contained all the delightful blood and guts originally intended), luckily the film is still more than violent, ably earning its R-rating. Added to that are familiar and reassuring action tropes like mafia thuggery, ninjas, rogue cops, children in peril, destructive car chases, and more, leaving The Punisher as one of the more rewarding experiences in this era of silly-action fare.
THE GOOD GUY
Frank Castle, former police officer whose family was killed by thugs, and who has since taken to living in and riding his motorcycle around the sewers beneath the city. His sunken face and five o’clock shadow give his face the appearance of a skull because subtlety. He’s on a mission to punish as many bad guys as possible, in as violent a way as he can concoct.
Dolph Lundgren put himself on the map with Rocky IV, probably the most dynamic “villain” of the Rocky series once it hit that stage where no one seemed to be taking anything all that seriously. Following that, Lundgren soon became the go-to action guy for films that it would seem on a very superficial surface Arnold Schwarzenegger had possibly declined. Following his turn as Ivan Drago, Lundgren would go on to contribute a barrage of films, some of them achieving cult status, including The Punisher. This streak would end with Universal Soldier, the actor’s last celebrated film, which would then begin the wasteland of direct-to-video garbage where the actor would sadly dwell for the next seventeen years until, ironically, his return to the Universal Soldier franchise. Since then, though he still makes his living mostly from forgettable action films, his involvement in the Expendables franchise (on which many action fans sadly hate) as well the increasingly interesting Universal Soldier sequels at the very least enable him to showcase in films that entertain mainstream audiences and show his range as an actor.
THE BAD GUY
There are two main bad guys that need punishing.
The first:
Gianni Franco, head of the Italian mafia, who attempts to gain control of the family and start putting back together what Castle has spent years shooting, stabbing, and mutilating. The film teeters back and forth between making him a generic villain and demanding the audience sympathize for him – a man who is “bad” according to the law, but who finds himself backed into a corner by a much worse and bloodthirsty threat when he crosses paths with the Yakuza, led by a bunch of crazy Asian and semi-Asian women who wear ninja stars as earrings.
Jeroen Krabbé, our Gianni Franco, would go on to play the villain in the far better 1993 update of The Fugitive. He plays an awful Italian, but an awesome dick.
Speaking of crazy Asian women…
The real villain here – or villainness, really – is Lady Tanaka. She’s the hilarious kind of action cinema crazy we want to see in our villains. She’s nasty, painstakingly trained in the deadly arts, cold as ice, quick-witted, and possesses an unending supply of Geisha doll face paint.
Kim Kiyori went on to a rather unspectacular career mostly playing bit parts on television. She also appeared in The Grudge 2 – likely as a Japanese woman, since that’s about the height of Hollywood’s imagination these days.
THE CASUALTIES
Throughout the course of The Punisher, the bad guys endure 42 shootings, 9 stabbings, 6 explosions (2 of those in a car), and one hanging, balcony toss-off, crossbow shooting, vehicular ruination, and limbs ripped out on a torture table, respectively. These are in addition to the off-screen backstory of Frank's 125 casualties, all which took place before the first frame of the film.
The bad guys commit their own fair share of murder, with their official tally consisting of 7 shot, 3 poisoned, 3 stabbed with various arrays of pointy sharp things, 2 various traumas committed against their person, 2 throats cut, and 2 spiky ball things thrown into their person.
All in, on-screen and off, Frank Castle directly and indirectly murders 206 bad guys. Not bad for a guy whose only friend is a rhyming drunk
THE BEST KILL
The nanny getting shot and the bullets tearing through the big stuffed panda bear she’s puppeting for kids is the kind of ridiculous and silly demise you want to see in this type of show. Honorable mention goes to the old woman with the gun/silencer combination, apparently a pawn of the Yakuza, blowing away some Italian mafia dudes in a restaurant.
THE DAMAGE
Frank Castle suffers: a switchblade tossed into his chest and the harbor breaks his fall; a chain into the gears of his motorcycle so he goes flying off into a wooden clown sign before getting his ass handed to him by a bunch of ninjas; his body stretched by chains on the Yakuza’s official torture table; his torso pummeled during his third-act breach of the ninja headquarters; and stabbed in the thigh and slashed in the face by a hot-chick ninja.
THE BAD GUY’S COMEUPPANCE
Lady Tanaka gets a knife through the head and Gianni Franco gets shot a couple times after he goes zero-hour turncoat.
THE LINE
“What do you call 125 murders in five years?”
“A work in progress.”
THE VERDICT
The Punisher may just be Dolph’s “best” film, acknowledging that his most prominent films are the ones in which he shares the screen with the likes of Sylvester Stallone or Jean-Claude Van Damme. Too quickly and too often, Dolph plunged into the depths of B-movie oblivion, many of his films being foreign-lensed low-budgeters made by folks eager for a quick buck rather than contribute anything of merit, and unfortunately it’s somewhat hindered his once-promising legacy. The appeal for many action-film fans is to not only pinpoint their action superstar of preference and celebrate that star’s filmography, but to also pinpoint the film that is their go-to – the one film where that one-man-army, hail-of-bullets mentality is front and center, but also the one where there’s not one extraneous scene to slow down the proceedings. Though The Punisher may not live up to the other films to come in this column, it remains the highlight of Dolph’s career in which the focus is on his character, and in which he murders literally hundreds of men.
Depending on who you ask, (and comic book fanatics are usually part of the conversation), every film so far baring the Punisher name has been cited as both the best and the worst attempt at bringing the character to celluloid. Given that Frank Castle has always been a somewhat dark character (a murdered family tends do that), there’s a genuine attempt to cloak Lundgren’s iteration of the character in as much darkness as possible. Yeah, ultimately The Punisher is kind of a stupid movie, but despite that, the attention paid to Frank Castle’s suffering as a man still mourning his family is ever present, which is why he shoots all the men he does!
Take that, add Louis Gossett Jr., who makes any film more fucking awesome, and you’ve got a non-pretentious actioneer sure to scratch your action itch.
