The film has a lot of great action-movie one-liners, all set up to be action-movie one-liners. Saint kills the Castles and their friends, so Castle kills the Saints and their associates – nothing more complex than that. Although the killing scenes are admittedly entertaining, they demonstrate how tidy this movie is in every way except for Frank’s dingy living quarters and the wreckage (to both scenery and people’s bodies) in the wake of fight scenes. This is where “The Punisher” gets particularly convenient, as Howard does exactly as Frank has planned. Then Frank will inform Howard of what he has done, a creative way to twist the knife rather than simply dispatching his enemies. Frank’s idea is that Howard will then kill his wife and bestie. One of Frank’s tricks is to use a fake fire hydrant to keep the parking spot open while he takes Livia’s car out for a spin to pile up fake evidence. The uneven tone leaves a viewer uncomfortably unbalanced, even if it also shows the difference between the good guy and the bad guys.Īll 9 ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ films, rankedĪ decent amount of screen time in director/co-writer Jonathan Hensleigh’s two-hour film is spent showing Frank’s meticulous frame-job of Howard’s wife, Livia (Laura Harring), and best friend, Quentin, for an affair. There’s a dark humor to this sequence, but later, Saint’s henchman Quentin (Will Patton) tortures Dave in a straightforward and horrifying fashion. Micky assumes he’s being burned so horribly that he feels coldness. He’s clever as heck, starting with how he “tortures” Saint’s associate Micky (Eddie Jemison, before he himself played a mob boss on “iZombie”) by rubbing a popsicle on his back while roasting a steak with a blowtorch. Frank shows clevernessĪnother surprise is that Frank’s killing skills don’t merely involve weapons. Seeing such warmth in a scary location is a welcome surprise. The other neighbors are techie Dave (Ben Foster) and foodie Bumpo (John Pinette). They’ve formed a makeshift family and are welcoming of Frank, especially after he dispatches the abusive boyfriend of Joan ( “X-Men’s” Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, on the short list of actors to do double duty in Marvel films). The heart of “The Punisher” comes from Frank’s three neighbors in his evocatively ratty apartment complex, a step up from his sewer abode in the 1989 Dolph Lundgren version. It’s a brief but welcome respite from the driving dirge rock (Drowning Pool, Puddle of Mudd, Nickelback, etc.) that otherwise fills the soundtrack, as such music did for most of the decade’s superhero movies. Heck’s biggest contribution to the film turns out to be his red-dirt country song about Frank’s death, which he weirdly performs in a diner as a precursor to their clash. And Harry Heck (Mark Collie) engages Castle in a muscle-car battle that ends with Frank finding a use for his projectile blade. The Russian (Kevin Nash) shows up at Frank’s dingy apartment to kill him with pure muscle, leading to a vicious fight where we learn that the Punisher can take punishment. Stars: Thomas Jane, John Travolta, Samantha Mathis Writers: Jonathan Hensleigh, Michael France
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