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The Punisher [1989 edition, bitches!] Review
by Doom, Nixon and the Red Fox
FUGGEDABOUTIT!
The Punisher (1989) has all the great tapestries of an 1980's film. It represents the decade when Hollywood still thought Italians ruled the crime families, and when it was still okay to be racist to Japanese, so long as you made them all ninjas, not flappy-dickies. There's the Punisher himself who is conceptualized as some kind of bad Sylvester Stallone ripoff [played by THE Sylvester Stallone ripoff, Dolph Lundgren] instead of a unique character, and even the "you're off the force" loose cannon style cop. Oh, everything's all here except what makes the Punisher a great comic: gruesome, brutal violence, dark humor, and Garth Ennis. It was the first Marvel comics movie, and after seeing it I can see exactly why it took 9 more years for Marvel to put out a movie that didn't make moviegoers violently puke upon viewing. If this is the craftsmanship that goes into a comic book movie, maybe some comic books should stay on paper.
"I LIKE APPLES"
Without putting much effort into the movie at all, the film begins five years after Frank Castle loses his family and starts killing Italian crime bosses as the brutal vigilante The Punisher. There are some over exaggerated killing scenes of one random crime boss, which is used to establish how badass the Punisher is, with the first visual of his face, which is very hilarious. If the people tried any harder to make him look overdramatic the guy would have been wearing black eye shadow. So, Castle talks about his dead family to God while being naked in a sewer, and learns about a drug shipment from his homeless alcoholic thespian friend. At the extreme face off at the dock, the Italians are taken out by the Yakuza who steal the drugs and injure Castle. There is an obligatory meet and greet between the two crime races, one of them being run by the ugliest Japanese woman ever born, and all the children of the Italians are stolen. Now that's what I call a story. Eventually some of the crime bosses are killed by the Yakuza and all the children are saved by a school bus driving Punisher who gets arrested in the process. What is funny is that he is in prison and is kidnapped himself by the Italians to help rescue the one remaining kid that he failed to save before. Boy, I wonder if Frank will rescue the kid and then kill off all the mobsters! Wouldn't that be an unlikely twist! More action scenes take place, all the villains die, and the Punisher disappears into the sewers from whence he came.
Frank's second wife.
Somewhere within the plot of "Fisher, you must rescue Italian children without them knowing!", there's a subplot of Frank's former partner, who's now heading up the Punisher task force. He's a black guy who looks and acts like a low grade Carl Weathers, an interesting conundrum as Carl Weathers is a low grade Carl Weathers. He also seems to be extremely gay for Frank Castle. Case in point: before Frank joined the force and became his partner, Jake was a drunkard with nothing to live for. But then Frank came into his life and made him happy in a completely heterosexual way. Then Frank 'died' along with his family and Jake lost the will to live. He spends the next five years heading up the Punisher Task Force. Sounds pretty gay to me, especially when his new partner explains to Frank that he is the only thing that Jake had left to live for. GAY.
In fact The Punisher forgets many of the main features that made Frank Castle the Punisher, versus, say, a drifter with a shotgun. For starters there's no sign of the skull on his chest, instead the Frank Castle of this film decides simply to wear a very dirty jacket, mostly it seems so that whenever he hits anything dust appears. He does have knives with skulls on them, though, which he leaves at every crime scene he's involved in. Next is the Punisher's vehicle, which was the second worst the Punisher has ever been associated with, after the Battle Van. His vehicle of choice? An old ass motorcycle that semi-falls apart when he kick starts it. He loves the motorcycle, and he even has the motorcycle in the Inevitable-Flashback-To-Family's-Death. He's not a Vietnam vet in this movie, instead he's a cop. My question is how did he become an expert in hand-to-hand combat, weaponry and explosives as a regular cop for the NYPD. Compounded with Dolph Lundgren's questionable acting and faces like the image below and you've got a pretty terrible adaptation of a great sociopath anti-hero.
He looks like his name should be Brick Faceblood.
Did I mention FUGGEDABOUTIT! Yes, the Punisher does have an extensively large amount of stereotypes that help to show how much the United States really had no way of making evil characters that weren't cardboard cutouts. Let's see, the Italian were the basic grease balls, from their pin striped suits to the large black mustaches. The only reason the Italians would be in power here anyway would be because it is the 80's, since later it would all be taken over by minorities. Next comes the Japanese, or the Japs as racists may say, who are just about one step away from saying "Me so shorry" and growing buck teeth. Considering all of them have the super Japanese ability of martial arts skills and all being hilariously short, like the one Japanese doctor who wears high heels. The Punisher himself is a stereotype in the fact that he plays the overdramatic badass card just a little too often. From the perpetual five o' clock shadow to the hilariously deep voice, he has to be one of the worst actors out there. It really is a toss up to decide the worst stereotype, jean jacket wearing Italian mob boss, the geisha girl of bad teeth, or rebel without a cause.
Yes, a combination of a throwing star and a mine. A classic Yakuza weapon.
This is one of the first American movies that I know of that makes use the Yakuza, and let me tell you, their portrayal isn't very accurate at all. The Foot Clan has more in common with this movie's Japanese gangsters than the Yakuza. The Yakuza, now the largest criminal organization as of this review's writing, is not a bunch of ninjas who occasionally carry guns and/or high heels. The Yakuza is a way for many Japanese youths to gain upward mobility, and the Yakuza is officially classified as a semi-legitimate business organization. The majority of their activities lie in protection rackets. No assassinations, none of the stuff our mafia does as the Yakuza has a standing in Japanese society. They're not even race-based like the Italian mobs are because often you will see Chinese or Korean Yakuza despite the fact that the Japanese hate the Chinese and Koreans, and the Chinese hates the Japanese and Koreans, and so on and so forth. Even Australians are members sometimes! Does The Punisher showcase any of this or at least show any of this information? No, they're just the wild Japanese with throwing stars and ninja moves! And the Yakuza woman villain scared the shit out of me because she's the first person I know of to have shoulder implants. And women can't be leaders of the Yakuza, either. So either Shoulders had a very special operation or this movie's full of shit. I could accept either of the two.
THOSE SHOULDERS
Not all crappy movies have Dolph Lundgren, but all Dolph Lundgren movies are crappy. Dolph Lundgren is your go-to guy when you want a strongman in an 80's movie but don't want to shell out huge amounts of cash. This explains why he is both Punisher and He-Man, not to mention a multitude of similarly badly-concocted pieces of tripe. Because he only stars in badly-concocted pieces of tripe, his acting skills are just where they should be for tripe. Dolph has no range, no variable voice, no nothing, he talks and acts the same the entire time. His voice in particular scares me; I think something must have crawled down his throat and died when his family was killed because each line of his sounds like a mini-explosion. This could be because Frank Castle is generally an unemotional character, but I've seen a lot of other Lundgren movies, and he doesn't display range there either. He generally looks stoned all the time. Plus, his scary unwavering pedophile eyes remind me of someone else's baby blue pedophile eyes - Vincent Gallo's. And anything that reminds me of that...person...is not good, not good at all. Vincent Gallo with a Fred Flintstone amount of stubble and black hair pasted on.
You'd think that if the plot and characters sucked, at least the action would be serviceable, but it's not. In fact, it's humorous more than it is cool and incoherent more than it is cool. The Punisher uses a lot of inane objects like knives and crossbows when they're inappropriate and guns would be better. The Yakuza uses throwing stars and knives, only in a more racist way than the Punisher. The action sequences are often funny, like a scene in a casino where Frank continues to fire his gun after everyone has left, seemingly staying around just to shoot at gambling machines. There's also a scene where Frank teams up with a mobster in a hallway they get Hobo guy to cut the lights. Then they tear through the walls of the hallway [this is Japanese territory so of course they're flimsy and poorly made] and hide in them, one on each side. Lights go back on, the Yakuza guys investigate, and Frank and mob dude start shooting, killing all the Yakuza guys. But somehow they don't shoot EACH OTHER despite being directly opposite one another. Weird? No. Continuity error? Yes. Finally, IMDB explains it all: "All of the fight sequences were improvised by the actors to give the fights a sense of realism." That makes sense, because the actors would not be people who know about fighting, so that's why all the fight scenes looked so stupid and obviously full of holes!
When one sees The Punisher, one will think that the writer and director have no talent. When one checks on IMDB, all doubt will be removed. Mark Goldblatt, the director, has not gone on to do much directing, instead he is often employed as an editor. He is one of the secret architects of Hollywood's decadence, being the 'editor' behind XXX2, Pearl Harbor, Bad Company, Hollow Man, Bad Boys II...out of 30 editing jobs he's done only 3 that weren't total rubbish. The rest speak for themselves. Boaz Yakin, the writer, is king of bad sequels after 'writing' the 'screenplay' for the 'movie' Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights. And I thought the original was painful. It is clear that these two losers didn't learn their lessons that 'jump-cuts and bad cheesy dialogue not only do not work on their own independent of each other, but especially suck in conjunction'. A shame.
The only memorable point in the Punisher is the character of Frank's only friend, the alcoholic homeless Shakespearean actor. He is fucking hilarious. The character is first introduced as a drunken loser who is led astray by a bottle of liquor on top of a remote control truck, the truck eventually leading him to his buddy the Punisher. Alcoholic homeless Shakespearean actor [AHSA for short] knows a lot about drug shipments or some shipments or something, at least information that proves him useful for the Punisher to bribe him with liquor. Throughout the film he shows up to help with Frank's plan, all in rhyme of course, and also of course all in a drunken slur. Unfortunately his character was never given a name, appearing as 'Drunk' in the credits. Thus I give him the name 'Maximillian Transient Esq.', keeping with his hobo lifestyle and his dapper manner of dressing and speech. He looks like he grew up to be Hugh Laurie. Here:
"I'M DR. HOUSE, DAMMIT!"
And here's a picture of the infamous remote controlled beer truck:
The Punisher is great for comedy. It's funnier than most of the alleged comedies that I've seen in a long time. But that's the ONLY, and I repeat, ONLY thing this movie is good for. As an action film, it sucks because action mostly involves crossbows and knives with skulls on them. As a crime film, it sucks because FUGGEDABOUTIT. As a Punisher film, it sucks because the Dolph Lundgren squarehead is nothing like the Punisher in terms of personality, voice, methods, motivation, anything. As a comics film, it sucks because it is also not reminiscent of the comics in the least. Overall, it's just a bad film. A comical bad film, but bad nonetheless. It's not as bad as Fantastic Four 2005, though. There's always that consolation.
How many drinks do I need for this to be good?: 90, all
delivered on remote control trucks
Mastur-factor: -7
The Stinger: Rhyming hobo!