Face-Off: The Punisher ’04 vs. Punisher: War Zone

Thomas Jane is awesome, but the Frank Castle he was given to play here doesn’t quite feel like the Punisher I want to see in action – and not only because this is an origin story that dedicates a third of the running time to building up to the event (the murder of his family) that turns Frank into a vigilante, while giving the character a new back story that includes a career working in the FBI. Jane has the stoic tough guy thing down, but this Frank toys with his prey to an excessive degree, spending an inordinate amount of time following people, taking pictures, moving around fake fire hydrants, and manipulating villains into killing other villains. It isn’t until the very end that Frank becomes the one man army I expect the Punisher to be. This isn’t just “The Punisher Begins”; it feels like “The Punisher Restrained”.

When the son of a criminal kingpin is killed in an FBI sting gone bad that was led by Frank Castle, grieving mother Livia Saint (Laura Harring) requests that her husband Howard (John Travolta) have Frank’s entire family killed. It would have been interesting if Livia was the final villain Frank had to face. Instead, she’s overshadowed by her husband. As Frank takes down Saint’s empire, Howard is easily manipulated into making moves that are against his own interest, and every right move he makes goes terribly wrong. Travolta doesn’t ham it up as much as you might fear, and Howard Saint comes off as a decent villain despite being played for a fool.

While Saint has a lot of guys who are ready to kill for him, most of them don’t make much of an impression. They’re just around so Frank can rack up an acceptable body count. A standout among the bunch is Saint’s right hand man Quentin Glass, who mainly stands out because he’s played by Will Patton. More interesting are the hitmen Saint calls in: musician Harry Heck (Mark Collie), who plays a song for Frank before attempting to kill him, and a hulking beast called The Russian (Kevin Nash), who is nearly unstoppable and tosses Frank around like a rag doll.

When it comes to helping him on his mission, most of Frank’s pals in this film are completely worthless. Joan, Bumpo, and Spacker Dave, his neighbors in the apartment building he operates out of, are actually included here to show him that there is an alternative to the vigilante life. He can make friends again, be welcomed into a new type of family, maybe even fall in love. It’s not helpful when Frank is out to kill people. He does get some needed assistance from Saint’s weaselly associate Mickey Duka, who agrees to help him after a fun “torture” scene involving a blowtorch, a slab of meat, and a popsicle.

Frank starts off by hitting Saint where it really hurts: in his bank account. He drops loads of the criminal’s money on the streets of Tampa, and later blows up some more of it. He then proves to be a master manipulator, playing a psychological game with Saint and causing him to murder his own wife and best friend. He does this simply so he can rub it in Saint’s face about thirty seconds before the man dies. So why bother in the first place? I’d rather watch the scenes in which Frank weapons up and mows down multiple bad guys. He kills more than twenty people over the course of the film, the highlight being the climactic sequence in which he pulls off most of those kills with the use of guns, bombs, and a bow and arrow.