The Punisher: War Zone

[annwfyn]

This isn't so much a film review as a question.

Is it possible to make a good film based on the Punisher?

Because I'm increasingly convinced that it isn't.

I've seen two Punisher films now, and heard a lot about the third, which starred Dolph Lundgren. I think I may need to watch it soon, just to test my hypothesis, which is that any film featuring the Punisher will, by the very nature of the story, either be very over the top and silly, or just kinda icky.

I think this is partly because the Punisher, to my mind, isn't really a hero. He's barely an anti-hero. He's a troubled man, who doesn't know where to draw the line, and leaves a trail of bodies in his wake. He's what happens to Batman when Batman breaks. He's the horrible warning to every superhero - 'this is what happens when you care more about the end result and stop caring about how you get there'. He's the reason people are scared of vigilantes, and about the only thing I liked about this film was that it started with him accidentally killing an undercover FBI agent in one of his shoot 'em up rampages. I'm totally convinced that any real Punisher would have a lot of accidental collateral damage. On another note, was I the only person who noticed that when he went after the big mob boss he killed the entire room. Is it really a death sentence just to be married to the mob? In the Punisher 'verse, it is.

The Punisher, I think, provides a really interesting contrast to the other Marvel heroes. I love him in Spiderman. I think he balances Spidey wonderfully, and brings up a lot of interesting moral quandries. The Punisher and Captain America, struggling to get along after Iron Man turns Captain America into a fugitive also is a glorious and wonderful story.

Frank Castle as the hero - the main character - leading the whole story? I don't think there's much to go with that. He's broken. There's no hope in his tale - only this brutal and driven vengeance crusade. His character has little capacity to develop from everything I've seen, and his trademark is ultra-violence. That leaves the film too places to go. Either you embrace the slight silliness inherent in a man who does gun down everyone and their dog, and let it go to camp, or you try and keep the tone serious, in which case you're mostly just telling the very squicky story of how bad things happening to one man leads to more bad things happening to everyone else.

Frankly, I think the only hope for Frank Castle is that he meets a recently orphaned acrobat with a need for revenge some time soon. OK, so I think he's got a lot further to go than Batman, but at least the only way is up. And anything else is just too depressing to think about.

Comments

[adze.livejournal.com]

While I've seen some nice moments with him (like taking on the Sentry while trying to assasinate Norman Osborn recently) I really don't like the Punisher, and never have done. I think it's just the casual use of excessive violence, really, that just sits badly with me in mainstream(*) superhero comics.

As a counterpoint to other heroes, though, when appearing in their titles, I think he works well - should Spiderman stop Frank putting a bullet into the guy who is holding ten people hostage? It'd get the job done, and be much less risky than Spiderman leaping into the place and punching the guy.

But, overall, I don't like him. He doesn't bring a lot to the world, in my opinion, except just killing lots of people, and that doesn't feel very heroic to me.


(*) - by which I mean DC & Marvel. I'm aware that he might fit in better somewhere else, but that's not where he is.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Like I said, he's not a hero. I'm not even sure he scrapes anti-hero. You're right - he's a nice contrast to Spidey or someone, but if you stick him in a film alone, all you have is a load of dead bodies and I really dislike that.

I also disliked his casual sadism, which actually seems to defeat the alleged point of him. OK, yeah, maybe him shotting the bad guy in the head is quicker and safer than Spidey jumping in and punching this guy. On the other hand, him pushing Jigsaw (pre-jigsaw) into a big vat of broken glass and watching him scream in pain as he gets cut to pieces isn't efficient, and when the mafia arrive earlier than expected, it means you have a psycho jigsaw who is still alive and mutilated and wanting revenge. The entire plot of the film would have been totally nullified if Punisher was even able to stick to his 'I'm just an efficient killer' schtick.

And at the end of the film, he still can't go for a clean kill with the big villain and has to burn him alive instead, which also hit my 'you know, you're just kinda icky' button.

I do think Punisher: War Zone would be a bad film, no matter what, but it also got me thinking about what it could have done better. And honestly, as long as Frank Castle is the central character I don't think any improvement on the minutiae of the film would make it 'good' or 'interesting to watch'. I think Frank Castle is just an unsympathetic character.

[adze.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that all seems a little unneccessary.

If I remember my history correctly, Frank could be a sympathetic character in the early stages - his family were wiped out by a gang for no real reason, and his drive to do something about that leads to him cleaning up the gang. There could be development in there, if it was done right. Now, though, he's just a killer, and in this movie, an inefficient one as well.

All that said, being an efficient killer probably makes for a really dull movie, with no real dramatic tension.

I think, overall, I'm glad that it isn't on in Hatfield, and will happily wait until next week for Push instead.

[alasdair.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, the Punisher comics of the last 5 years or so have been some of the best comics out there. They treat him as a very peculiarly damaged man who never really recovered from Vietnam, someone who knows he is damned, but who does it anyway. The don't present him as a hero, just a remarkable man. They do an interesting job of balancing a take on him that is just this side of being a force of nature with humanising him, showing that he had buttons that can be pushed and that he is capable of little humanising acts of kindness.

It helps that often, the focus of the comic is the bad guys who are generally so appalling, without being cartoonish, that he comes off looking a lot better. The series actually manages to use the Punisher as a vehicle to explore a lot of real-world crimes in a way that you couldn't with a "normal" superhero.

If I had to recommend a collection, it would probably be either "Slavers" or "Mother Russia".

[ksirafai.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, I'm reminded of a series I read a while ago, where every hero got their own perfect world. Frank had his wife back, and his children, and his dog, and it was fantastic, till he started killing everyone around him in a desperate attempt to keep it perfect, because he refused to believe that it was actually going well - then walked in on his wife in the kitchen with gore and body parts falling from him, and then she screamed and ran away... I'm not entirely certain whether or not he killed her himself or if the enemies he'd created by gunning down any potential threat to them got revenge by killing them anyhow, but it was a horrible and brutal story about someone who isn't actually capable of living in a world where violence and vengeance aren't the driving forces...

I don't like Punisher. I feel that I got a lot better evening by clearing my bedroom, reading some awful vampire novel and getting an early night. :P

[alasdair.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the recent comics have definitely not been shy about suggesting that there is a large part of him that cannot cope without the violence, even if there is another part of him that at one point describes it as "this cold dark hell I have made of my life". He's a complete fuck up, no question. Which is why he's interesting, and why I'm in no rush to see the movie, because I just don't think they'll get enough of the complexity and contradictions in him into a Hollywood movie.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I don't think the movie counts as 'complex' on any level. I think that's another thing I disliked - they start off by suggesting that the police and FBI are hunting him, but by the end every single law enforcement professional who comes in touch with him has helped him out and given him moral justification.

Even the widow of the FBI agent he shoots by mistake tells him he's a good guy at the end.

After watching him slaughter and torture anyone who might have walked a mafioso's dog for the last hour, I felt that some doubt the other way might be in order.

[alasdair.livejournal.com]

>>>tells him he's a good guy at the end.<<<

OK, that's not a reation *anyone* should have to him. At best, talking to him is dealing with the devil. I may watch the movie for the dumb explodo at some point, but I shall pretend I am not watching The Punisher.

[pmp.livejournal.com]

I actually quite like the Punisher; I find the contrast of evil vs the morally dubious at best a lot more realistic. People call him a "hero" only because he gets rid of the "bad guys", they don't want to think about his methods, or the fact that he leaves a trail of bodies behind, all they are glad for is that it's not happening to them. In the first movie, think about the way his house mates reacted when he was torturing the mook that came after them. They were intially scared and revolted that he did that, but soon gave up their objections when more people came after them and he stopped them.

It also makes you think, if we think the Punisher is going too far, aren't soliders also just as bad when they recklessly assault a village harbouring "terrorists"?

[melsner.livejournal.com]

Strangely, because it's Friday the 13th, I find myself thinking of the Punisher more like a horror movie character. Like Jason Voorhees. You could look at him as one of those characters where his origin is tragic and you can kind of understand his motivations... But at the end of the day, he's still a monster.

There's a line that pops up in several of his comics... He knows he's going to Hell for what he's done, but he's taking as many criminals with him as he can.