The Punisher 2004 Film Review
The Punisher is a 2004 American comic book action Film, based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name, starring Thomas Jane as the antihero Frank Castle / The Punisher and John Travolta as the villain Howard Saint, a money launderer who orders the death of Castle's entire family. The story and plot were mainly based on two Punisher comic book stories; The Punisher: Year One and Welcome Back, Frank along with scenes from other Punisher stories such as Marvel Preview Presents: The Punisher, Marvel Super Action Featuring: The Punisher, The Punisher War Zone, and The Punisher War Journal.
The film was an attempt at rebooting the character after the failure of the 1989 film of the same name. The Punisher was shot on location in Tampa, Florida, and surrounding environs in mid- to late 2003. It was distributed by Lions Gate Entertainment in North America, although Artisan Entertainment, which produced 1989's The Punisher, financed and co-distributed the film with Lionsgate, while Columbia Pictures distributed the film in non-North American countries. Director Jonathan Hensleigh agreed to helm the film during its development stage despite a dispute with Marvel Studios.
The film was released on April 16, 2004, by Lions Gate Entertainment, grossing $13,834,527
in the United States over its opening weekend. A DVD release followed
on September 7, 2004 - with $10.8 million in copies sold. The success of
the DVD sales prompted Marvel Comics and Lionsgate to start development on a sequel titled The Punisher 2, which instead became a reboot titled Punisher: War Zone after Jane and Hensleigh left the project due to creative differences. This was the last film produced by Artisan Entertainment...More about The Punisher 2004 Film Review...keep reading !!
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Plot (The Punisher 2004)
When Bobby Saint and Mickey Duka meet with European arms dealer Otto Krieg at the Tampa, Florida seaport, the FBI
intervenes and Saint is killed while Duka is jailed. "Krieg",
supposedly killed in the shootout, is actually undercover FBI agent and
former U.S. Army Delta Force operator Frank Castle (Thomas Jane). Shortly thereafter, he retires from the FBI and attends a family reunion at his father's oceanside home in Aguadilla Bay, Puerto Rico. Tampa crime boss Howard Saint (John Travolta) is enraged by the death of his son, and with right-hand man Quentin Glass (Will Patton)
bribes the FBI (specifically a debt-ridden close friend of Castle's)
for confidential information about "Krieg". Once he finds out that
"Krieg" is really Castle, Saint orders Castle murdered, and Saint's
wife, Livia (Laura Harring), demands that Castle's entire family be killed as well to "settle the score".
At Castle's family reunion, gunmen including Glass and John Saint,
Bobby's identical twin, kill most of the extended family. Castle and his
father (Roy Scheider) kill several of the attackers before Castle's father is killed. Castle's wife (Samantha Mathis)
and son try to escape in a jeep, but Saint runs over them with a truck,
killing them. Castle, shot in the chest and blown off a pier in an
explosion set by Glass, survives and is nursed back to health by a local
fisherman, Candelaria.
Once recovered, Castle travels to Tampa and takes refuge in an old
tenement where three young outcasts—Dave, Bumpo and Joan—live. Castle
abducts Mickey Duka, who fearfully gives up information about the
Saints, but soon willingly becomes Castle's mole,
given that he despises the Saints as much as Castle does. Castle starts
exacting revenge on the police and FBI agents who have been bribed to
close the investigation of his family's murder. In the process, he
sabotages Saint's money-laundering business and severs Saint's
partnership with Cuban mobsters the Toro Brothers, and starts tailing
Livia and Glass, whom he learns is a closeted homosexual.
Saint, realizing Castle is alive, sends two assassins to kill him.
Castle kills the first, guitar player Harry Heck, by shooting a ballistic knife into Heck's throat. The second is "the Russian",
a behemoth who beats Castle in a brutal fight but is defeated when
Castle throws boiling oil in his face, blinding him long enough for
Castle to throw him down a staircase, breaking his neck. Moments later,
Saint's men arrive, led by Glass and John Saint. Dave, Joan and Bumpo
hide Frank and refuse to tell Glass where he is, despite Glass pulling
out Dave's multiple facial piercings with a pair of pliers. They leave a
man behind to kill Castle upon his return, but Castle kills him once
Glass and the others are gone. Dave is taken to the hospital, and Castle
makes preparations to finish the fight against Saint, despite Joan's
attempts to persuade Castle not to.
With assistance from Mickey, Castle manipulates Saint into believing
Glass and Livia are having an affair. Saint, unaware Glass is gay, and
believing Livia to be capable of cheating on him, kills each of them
personally, neither of them knowing why. In desperation, Saint provides
each of his henchmen with $50,000, and offers $50,000 more to whoever
manages to find and kill Castle.
Castle, however, attacks Saint's headquarters, the downtown Tampa nightclub Saints and Sinners, killing many of Saint's henchmen. He also kills John Saint, who is trapped under collapsed debris, by having him hold an eight-pound, trip-wire activated grenade in his fully extended arm until his arm wearies and the grenade explodes. Castle wounds Howard Saint with a pistol when Saint attempts to shoot him in the parking lot of the nightclub. Castle then ties Saint to a slow-moving car, but not before revealing that Glass and Livia were not having an affair. Several hidden bombs go off, killing Saint in the process; the destruction and wreckage culminate in the shape of the Punisher's iconic skull.
Later that night, Castle returns to his apartment and prepares to
commit suicide, but after a brief vision of his wife, decides to
continue his vigilante mission against others who in his mind deserve
punishment. Before departing on his next mission, he leaves most of
Saint's money for Bumpo, Joan and Dave. On the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, he vows, "Those who do evil to others—the killers, the rapists, psychos, sadists—will come to know me well. Frank Castle is dead. Call me... the Punisher."
Cast
- Thomas Jane as Frank Castle / The Punisher
- John Travolta as Howard Saint
- Roy Scheider as Frank Castle, Sr.
- Will Patton as Quentin Glass
- Rebecca Romijn as Joan
- Laura Harring as Livia Saint
- Ben Foster as Spacker Dave
- John Pinette as Bumpo
- Samantha Mathis as Maria Elizabeth Castle
- Marcus Johns as Will Castle
- Russell Andrews as Agent James "Jimmy" Weeks
- James Carpinello as Robert "Bobby" Saint and John Saint
- Eddie Jemison as Mickey Duka
- Eduardo Yáñez as Mike Toro
- Omar Avila as Joe Toro
- Kevin Nash as The Russian
- Mark Collie as Harry Heck
- Veryl Jones as Candelaria
- Tom Nowicki as Lincoln
- Hank Stone as Cutter
Director Jonathan Hensleigh and Avi Arad
said in many interviews that Thomas Jane was the first and only actor
to be asked to play the title role. Jane initially turned down the role
twice, as he did not see himself as a superhero actor. Jane said, when asked the second time to play the Punisher, that he became interested when Arad sent Tim Bradstreet's artwork of the character. After learning more about the Punisher, he accepted. Jane went on to read as many Punisher
comics he could find to understand the character, and became a fan of
the Punisher in the process. Jane trained for six to seven months with
the United States Navy SEALs and gained more than twenty pounds of muscle for the part.
Production
Before filming began, Hensleigh was not given the budget he wanted or
needed from the studio, Hensleigh knew that most action pictures get a
budget of around $64 million. He was only given $33 million, with only
$15.5 million going towards the shooting budget and post-production for
the film, with only 52 days to shoot, which is half the time allocated for most
action pictures. Most of Hensleigh's original script had to be edited
and re-written many times due to budget issues. According to the DVD
commentary, the first scene in the film would have been a battle set in Kuwait during the Gulf War, but they were unable to film this scene as a result of the budget cuts.
The Punisher was filmed on location in Tampa, Florida.
The Florida location was first chosen at the insistence of screenwriter
Michael France, who advised Marvel and Artisan that "it would be cheap
to shoot [there] - that they'd get a lot more for their money than in
New York or Chicago" as well as wanting to use "both sunny locations,
and dark, industrial locations" in the screenplay. For inspiration, Hensleigh and cinematographer Conrad W. Hall looked at
dozens of action films from the 1960s and 1970s, such as the Dirty Harry series, The Getaway, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The Godfather and Bonnie and Clyde. In an interview, Hensleigh also stated the film pays homage to Mad Max and William Shakespeare's Othello, though while he was inspired by Othello,
the characters were reversed for the film, making the Punisher the
instigator of the jealousy which leads to Howard Saint murdering his
best friend and wife.
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