April 16, 2004 | In the pantheon of Marvel Comics heroes, The Punisher ranks several rungs below such luminaries as The Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk and The Amazing Spider-Man. He’s not really a super hero – he’s armed with nothing more potent than big guns and bad attitude – and you could argue that his vigilante credo actually qualifies him as an anti- hero. Still, he can claim a distinction that no other Marvel heavyweight can match: So far, he has inspired not just one but two junky movies.
To be sure, the latest film rendering of The Punisher is marginally better than the slapdash 1989 edition featuring Dolph Lundgren in the title role and Jeroen Krabbe as his crimelord antagonist. As a straight-up action-adventure, however, the new version — with Thomas Jane ( Deep Blue Sea ) as the vengeful lead and John Travolta as a deadly serious (and deathly dull) bad guy — fires blanks. Thoroughly routine in every respect, it plays like a paint-by-numbers pilot for a cable-TV series that you’d never want to watch.
Jane stars as Frank Castle, a Florida-based FBI agent whose final assignment before early retirement involves the scuttling of a gun-running enterprise. Unfortunately, the mission ends with the inadvertent killing of a would-be arms dealer who just happens to be a son of Howard Saint (Travolta), a seemingly respectable Tampa businessman who keeps vicious killers on his payroll while he launders millions for South American drug kingpins.
Saint makes his displeasure known by ordering his goons to invade Castle’s family reunion celebration in Puerto Rico. During the resulting slaughter, the FBI agent loses his beloved wife (Samantha Mathis) and young son (Marcus Johns). But Castle himself survives, albeit just barely, and returns to Florida to dispense rough justice as – ta-dah! – The Punisher.
Jane displays appropriate physicality and brooding gravitas, and looks way-cool in The Punisher’s trademark, skull-adorned T-shirt. Overall, however, he’s hampered by director Jonathan Hensleigh’ s oddly and off-puttingly colorless conception of the obsessed avenger as a generic action hero.
And Travolta? Well, it’s always a bad sign when an actor must thoughtfully smoke a pipe from time to time to give his character at least one distinguishing trait. But Travolta doesn’t help matters by conveying all the enthusiasm of someone who’s fulfilling a commitment after losing a bet.
