Entry 58: The Punisher (1989)

The Punisher (1989)

Dir: Mark Goldblatt

"If society won't punish the guilty, he will."


In this (loose) adaptation of the popular Marvel comic book series, Dolph Lundgren (Rocky IV, Masters of the Universe) plays Frank Castle, a dedicated former police officer who has become a relentless vigilante after his wife and children die in a car bomb intended for him.  Anguished, obsessive Castle lives in the sewer (an idea copied from the then-red-hot Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), dresses in black leather and rides around on a big motorcycle.  Frank has an alcoholic, homeless ex-actor informant/sidekick called Shake (Barry Otto, The Howling III, Strictly Ballroom) and is doggedly hunted by his former partner (Louis Gosset, Jr., Jaws 3-D, Iron Eagle).  When the Yakuza, aware of the power vacuum created by Castle's murder spree, come to town and kidnap the children of the local mafioso to ensure a power transfer, Frank is blackmailed into teaming up with mafia don Jeroen Krabbe (The Living Daylights, The Fugitive), the very man who ordered the hit that killed his family!

If you're a comic book fan, you probably don't like this movie much.  You're probably bothered by the changes to the Punisher's origin and the fact that Lundgren doesn't wear a skull on his shirt.  To that, I say "fuck you;" this is one of the best low-budget actioners of the 80s!  If you have to, just pretend it's not an adaptation and enjoy it for what it is; a violent, grimy, relentless piece of action cinema.  This one was done by Corman's New World Pictures right before it collapsed, and the studio's financial problems prevented it from receiving a US theatrical release (it deserved one, goddammit, but eventually got a home video release in 1991).  It was filmed on the cheap in Australia (tax breaks!), and its downtown Sydney locations aren't particularly believable as an American city, and neither is Lundgren as an American named Frank.  That said, the big Swede gives one of his best performances here; his Castle is a brooding, tortured, usually silent individual with an always-distant look in his sunken eyes (for my fellow geeks, he looks like he stepped right out of a John Romita, Jr. panel from the Punisher War Zone series).  It's also a surprisingly vanity-free performance for this type of film; Lundgren is pale, sweaty, unshaven and (a couple VERY brief nude meditation scenes notwithstanding) never indulges in any of the shirtless vanity shots so often found in Stallone and Schwarzenegger pictures.  Director Goldblatt (better known as the Academy Award-winning editor of films such as Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Armageddon and Rise of the Planet of the Apes) has a lot of fun juxtaposing the film's extreme graphic violence (Castle deals out kneck-breakings, throat-slashings, impalings and large-caliber bullet holes to men and women alike) with some goofily stereotypical comic books and cartoon locales (a hall of mirrors, an abandoned amusement park, Krabbe's Bond villain-like lair).  Give this one a look before writing it off!