The Punisher (2004 film)

The Punisher
Theatrical poster for The Punisher
Directed by	Jonathan Hensleigh
Written by	Jonathan Hensleigh Michael France
Produced by	Avi Arad Gale Anne Hurd
Starring	Thomas Jane John Travolta Rebecca Romijn Will Patton Ben Foster Roy Scheider Laura Harring
Cinematography	Conrad W. Hall
Edited by	Steven Kemper Jeff Gullo
Music by	Carlo Siliotto
Distributed by	Worldwide: Columbia Pictures United States: Lions Gate Entertainment
Release dates	April 16, 2004
Running time	Theatrical Cut: 124 min. Extended Cut: 141 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$15,500,000
Box office	Domestic: $33,810,189 Foreign: $20,889,916 Worldwide: $54,700,105

The Punisher is a 2004 action film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name, starring Thomas Jane as Frank Castle and John Travolta as Howard Saint, the 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: Featuring The Punisher #2, The Punisher War Zone and The Punisher War Journal.

The Punisher was shot on location in Tampa, Florida in mid to late 2003. It was originally set to be distributed by Artisan Entertainment in North America, but went into the distribution of Lionsgate following their purchase of Artisan, while Columbia Pictures distributed the film in non-North American countries. Director Jonathan Hensleigh agreed to helm the film during it's development stage despite a dispute with Marvel Studios. The Punisher was rated R by the MPAA for pervasive brutal violence, language and brief nudity, making it one of the few Marvel films to receive an "R" rating.

The film was released on April 17, 2004 by Lions Gate Entertainment, grossing $13,834,527 in the United States over its opening weekend. The Punisher received mainly negative reviews from film critics. A DVD release followed on September 7, 2004 with $10.8 million in copies sold.

The success of the DVD sales of the film prompted Marvel Comics to start development on a sequel titled The Punisher 2, however the project lingered in development for over three years. But both Jonathan Hensleigh and Thomas Jane pulled out due to the script not being good, creative differences and the studio not wanting to spend a lot of money on the project.

Plot

The film opens with an arms deal taking place at a port in Tampa Bay. Bobby Saint and Micky Duka meet with their contact, Otto Krieg, to provide him with the payments, but at the last moment, the FBI intervenes, and in the ensuing confrontation, Bobby and Otto are shot dead (Bobby is killed by one of the Russian arms dealers, and Otto by the FBI), and Duka is taken to prison. However, it is then revealed that Otto Krieg is in fact FBI agent and ex-Delta Force soldier Frank Castle, who was undercover and was shot by an agent using blanks and squibs filled with fake blood. Shortly thereafter, Castle celebrates a retirement party with his friends, and heads home.

Meanwhile, it transpires that Bobby Saint is the son of the ruthless and powerful mob boss, Howard Saint, who is enraged by the death of his son and almost kills Duka (who was bailed out). Instead, Saint and his associate, Quentin Glass, bribe the FBI to provide them with confidential information about Otto Krieg, who brokered the arms deal, and find out his true identity. At Bobby's funeral, Saint learns Castle is at a family reunion in Puerto Rico and will be heading for London, England soon. He requests that Castle be killed, but at the last moment, Saint's wife, Livia, demands that they murder Castle's entire family as well, in a twisted act of (what the Saints believe to be) revenge.

At the reunion, Saint's cronies, Quentin Glass and John Saint (Bobby's older brother) among them, kill all of Castle's family. Castle himself survives the massacre and is nursed back to health by a local man named Candelaria.

Castle takes refuge in an old tenement building where three young outcasts named, Dave, Bumpo and Joan live. There, he starts his own mission of revenge, especially after learning that the police and the FBI, even five months after his family's murder, have no intention of pursuing the men responsible (Saint has essentially bribed them to cover up the case). In the process, Castle sabotages Saint's money laundering business and severs Saint's partnership with the Cuban mobsters, the Toro Brothers, Mike and Joe, and starts tailing Livia and Glass, learning that Glass is in fact homosexual (which he hides from Saint), all thanks to information provided to him by Micky Duka, who hates the Saints and was convinced to help Castle.

File:Howard Saint Punisher.jpg

John Travolta as Howard Saint

Saint realizes that Castle is alive, and sends two assassins to kill him. First is Harry Heck, who after a brief car chase, which resulted in Castle flipping his car over to avoid hitting a child, Castle kills Heck with a ballistic knife which shoots into Heck's throat, hitting the carotid artery. The second is the Russian, a behemoth who gives Castle a severe beating until he gets a steaming pot of water that Bumpo was prepping splashed onto his face, which severely disfigures and blinds him long enough for Castle to charge and send both of them tumbling down the staircase, causing the Russian's neck to break in the process. Moments later, Saint's men arrive, led by Glass and John. Dave, Joan and Bumpo hide Castle, and refuse to tell Glass where he is, despite Glass sadistically pulling Dave's piercings out with a pair of pliers.

That night, Castle prepares himself for battle, and manipulates Saint into believing that Glass and Livia were having an affair behind his back, by planting one of Livia's earrings on Glass' messed-up bed (which Castle himself had done). Saint, unaware that Glass was homosexual, and believing Livia (who is implied by dialogue to have been a prostitute before meeting Howard) to be capable of cheating on him, consequently kills them both, neither of them knowing why.

Castle then attacks Saint's club, where he wages a one-man war on Saint's entire crew, killing everyone inside, including John. Saint attempts to escape, but Castle catches up with him and shoots him fatally in the stomach. As Saint writhes in agony, Castle reveals the evidence that Glass and Livia were not having an affair, but gives Saint little time to grieve, for he ties Saint to a running car, which goes into a bomb-laden car park, blowing countless cars up and killing Howard Saint. The destruction and wreckage culminates into the shape of Castle's iconic skull.

After his revenge is taken, Castle prepares to kill himself, it is while he puts the gun to his chin he has a flashback of his wife Maria and chooses not to go through with the act and decides he will continue his vigilante mission against others who deserve punishment. Before departing on his next mission, he leaves some of Howard Saint's money for Bumpo, Joan and Dave. At the final scene, on the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, Castle delivers a short monologue:

Those who do evil to others - the killers, the rapists, psychos, sadists - you will come to know me well. Frank Castle is dead. Call me... The Punisher.

Cast

Actor	Character
Thomas Jane	Frank Castle / The Punisher
John Travolta	Howard Saint
Will Patton	Quentin Glass
Rebecca Romijn	Joan
Ben Foster	Spacker Dave
John Pinette	Bumpo
Samantha Mathis	Maria Elizabeth Castle
Marcus Johns	Will Castle
Russell Andrews	Jimmy Weeks
James Carpinello	Robert "Bobby" Saint John Saint
Laura Harring	Livia Saint
Eddie Jemison	Micky Duka
Eduardo Yáñez	Mike Toro
Omar Avila	Joe Toro
Kevin Nash	The Russian
Mark Collie	Harry Heck
Roy Scheider	Frank Castle, Sr.
Veryl Jones	Candelaria
Tom Nowicki	Lincoln
Hank Stone	Cutter

Before actor Thomas Jane became the Punisher, director Jonathan Hensleigh and Avi Arad have said in many interviews that Jane was the first and only actor to be asked to play the title role. Jane initially turned down the role twice, as well as a part in the first X-Men movie and a few other comic book movies, the reason for that was because he did not see himself as a superhero actor. Jane said that when they asked him the second time to play the Punisher, what really got him interested in playing the part was when Arad sent Tim Bradstreet's artwork of the Punisher. After finding out what kind of character the Punisher was, he accepted. In addition to reading as many Punisher comics he could find to understand the character, Jane became a fan of the Punisher. Jane trained for six or seven months with the United States Navy SEALs and gained more than twenty pounds of muscle for the part.

Production

"I had to ask myself intellectual questions like, 'To what extent do crimes against a person become so unconscionable, so heinous, that even a person who does not believe in vigilantism can resort to vigilantism in a more just way?' That was the equation for me. I told Marvel that I didn't just want to do a revenge story, that I wanted to do the mother of all revenge stories. I wanted to ramp everything up. I can't really go further without doing spoilers here. The underlying events that give rise to Frank Castle's vigilantism are not from the comic. I invented a lot of that. I made it a lot worse."

—Jonathan Hensleigh on The Punisher

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 a $15 million dollar budget for the movie, in addition to only having 52 days to shoot the movie, which is half the number of days it takes to shoot most action pictures. Most of Hensleigh's original script had to be edited and re-written many times due to budget costs. According to the DVD commentary, the first scene in the movie 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. For inspiration, Hensleigh and cinematographer Conrad W. Hall looked at dozens of action movies 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, 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.

As stated above the story and plot were mainly based on two Punisher comic book stories; Welcome Back, Frank and The Punisher: Year One but before the film was released in theaters Jonathan Hensleigh was asked if the movie had been entirely based on The Punisher: Year One storyline. Jonathan Hensleigh stated:

The Punisher: Year One was a four-issue set that came out in 1994-1995. It has this really cool cover art and I highly recommend it. I took just pieces of the plot. If the entire movie was just based on Year One then the plot line would have been way, way too involved and it would have been Gone with the Wind—a four-hour movie with only the very ending having any action in the whole movie at all.

During shooting of the film Lionsgate had purchased Artisan. In an interview with Jonathan Hensleigh, Hensleigh said that even though the movie is under Lionsgate, they had nothing to do with the film. Lionsgate never gave a green light for the film to be made. The film was still under Artisan Entertainment.

The character of Microchip was originally included in an earlier Michael France draft (along with the character Jigsaw), but was excised from later drafts because of director Jonathan Hensleigh's distaste for him. Hensleigh said:

There are a couple of years where I did not want to go; Microchip, the battle van, all that stuff where it got really high-tech; we're not going there at all. I deemed that too complicated, too lacking of the spirit of the sort of urban vigilante. The Punisher does not just go around blowing people away using such things that Batman or James Bond would have or would even be in envy of; he uses guile and cunning just as much as he does weaponry and physical combat.

Release and reception

The Punisher opened in 2,649 theaters on April 16, 2004 and grossed $13,834,527 over its opening weekend, ranking at #2 at the box office. The film has a domestic gross of $33,810,189 and a foreign gross of $20,889,916, giving it a worldwide total of $54,700,105.

On its release, it was met with mainly negative reviews, and recieved a 28% rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes. A few reviewers have defended the movie stating that compared to most comic book based movies, it is a well done throwback to the old school action movies of the 1960s and 1970s.

Novelization

The novelization of the movie which has Jonathan Hensleigh's original script and screenplay and a mini comic book by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon that came with the DVD (the first and only DVD mini prequel comic book and only 10,000 produced) has it that Frank Castle fought in Iraq in the Gulf War (Frank was awarded the Bronze Star after the war), in Bosnia in the Bosnian War and was a member of the Delta Force, CTU (there is no relation to the Jack Bauer character that works for CTU on the TV series 24) and the FBI. The novel also has it that the setting of the Vietnam War, which is a big and important part of the Punisher’s past in the comic book, had to be replaced by having him in the Gulf War and as an undercover agent in the FBI. He spends months deep undercover surrounded by people who would simply blow his head off if he slipped up. The writer says that getting into character as these people were starting to taint Frank (this is also seen in the mini comic book) that he seemed to enjoy it too much when it came to killing the bad guys. Living on the wrong side of the law for a time, even if it wasn't for the job, is something else that explains his assuming the mantle of the Punisher.

DVD sales

The Punisher DVD was released on September 7, 2004 and sold nearly 1.8 million copies in its first five days and netted $10.8 million in rentals its first week out, making it number one in DVD sales. Sales continued at a steady pace, ultimately topping 4 million units. During October, The Punisher DVD rentals were still in the top ten and various cable and satellite providers had started to offer The Punisher as a pay-per-view feature. Between worldwide movie box office and DVD sales, it grossed $115 million ($55 million worldwide + $60 million from DVD sales).

Extended cut

An extended cut DVD was released on November 21, 2006 with 17 minutes of additional footage, most of which revolves around the character Jimmy Weeks (Russell Andrews), and Frank realizing that it was his friend that sold him out to Howard Saint. Features also include a black and white stop motion animated scene, set in Kuwait based on and partially done by artist Tim Bradstreet, and a Punisher comic book gallery. An extended version of "In Time" by Mark Collie also appears in the closing credits of the extended cut DVD. This version does not included the special features on the standard DVD release.

The Punisher was released on Blu-ray Disc on June 27, 2006.

Soundtrack

Main article: The Punisher: The Album

Untitled

The score to The Punisher was composed and conducted by Italian composer Carlo Siliotto. Director Jonathan Hensliegh wanted the music to be very emotional, and was aware of Siliotto previous work which led to him being chosen. When scoring the film Siliotto saw Frank Castle as a tragic figure stating; "This man, Frank Castle, is somebody who has a slaughtered family. He comes through that slaughter, and becomes a punisher. But he's a sad man - he drinks, and has bad memories always coming to him. There's a lot in the film, and at times it is like a modern version of a classic tragedy - like Othello." Siliotto's music (especially "The Punisher"/"The Skull" theme) was critically acclaimed and received generally good responses by fans.

1. "The Punisher" (0:56)
2. "Otto Krieg" (3:14)
3. "Unusual Resurrection" (1:40)
4. "Moving" (3:09)
5. "I Can't Believe I'm Home" (1:23)
6. "His Whole Family" (1:27)
7. "The Massacre" (5:45)
8. "Death and Resurrection of Frank Castle" (1:47)
9. "God's Gonna Sit This One Out" (3:57)
10. "Ice Lolly and Meat" (1:28)
11. "You're Gonna Help Me" (1:24)
12. "Entering the Fort" (1:58)
13. "About Your Family / Setting a Trap" (3:11)
14. "A Bomb for John Saint" (1:08)
15. "Good Memories Can Save Your Life" (1:13)
16. "The Thugs" (1:30)
17. "The Torture" (3:12)
18. "Elevator and Headache" (1:07)
19. "A New Family / Joan's Suffering" (3:34)
20. "Quentin's Glass Home" (1:32)
21. "Killing a Best Friend" (1:43)
22. "You Don't Understand... End of a Dark Lady" (2:34)
23. "She Took the Train / Punishment" (1:47)
24. "The Arrow" (1:48)
25. "Both of Them" (1:32)
26. "The Skull" (2:34)
27. "Castle's Loneliness" (1:35)
28. "Call Me ‘The Punisher’" (2:23)
29. "Jealous One" by J.C. Loader (3:52)
30. "La donna è mobile" by Peter Dvorsky (2:06)

Awards and nominations (2005)

Won

• Taurus World Stunt Awards
  • Best Fire Stunt (Mark Chadwick)

Nominated

• Prism Awards
  • Wide Release Feature Film
• Taurus World Stunt Awards
  • Best Overall Stunt by a Stunt Woman (Donna Evans)
  • Best Stunt Coordinator and/or 2nd Unit Director (Gary Hymes)
  • Best Work with a Vehicle (Keii Johnston & Dane Farwell)

Sequel

Lions Gate Entertainment had greenlit a direct sequel to be made due to the strong performance the film had on DVD. However, the project lingered in development for over three years. Jonathan Hensleigh completed a first draft of the script before pulling out around 2006. John Dahl was in talks to direct the film but pulled out due to the script not being good and the studio not wanting to spend a lot of money on the project. In a statement on May 15, 2007 and in two audio interviews Thomas Jane said that he pulled out of the project due to creative differences and the budget of the film being cut, in addition to director Walter Hill being turned down as director by Lionsgate.

"What I won't do is spend months of my life sweating over a movie that I just don't believe in. I've always loved the Marvel guys, and wish them well. Meanwhile, I'll continue to search for a film that one day might stand with all those films that the fans have asked me to watch.

External links

• The Punisher Trailer
• The Punisher on Marvel.com
• The Punisher at Box Office Mojo
• The Punisher at IMDb
• The Punisher at Rotten Tomatoes
• Template:Shh