FilmBlather.com

"Go with God."
"God's gonna sit this one out."

Comic books and action movies often ask us to accept their heroes as righteous enforcers, flying, crawling, swinging or driving through the Mean Streets and acting as judge, jury and executioner. They've been wronged in one way or another, and so they take the law into their own hands, usually with the explicit intention of helping innocents, avenging victims, punishing wrongdoers, or some combination of the three. These stories can be fun, but if they go on for long enough someone will inevitably ask the Big Question: isn't it somewhat of a problem that this guy is acting as a one-man police force?

Films like Walking Tall and Daredevil are complicit in their notions of moral rectitude, slavishly accepting their heroes' claims of being virtuous dealers of justice. Jonathan Hensleigh's The Punisher isn't quite so comfortable with that idea. Based on a popular serial about a government agent who methodically hunts down his family's killers and doesn't stop there, the cleverly self-reflexive movie constantly prods and provokes, hitting certain emotional notes and then asking why we reacted the way we did. It is one of the most thoughtful comic book adaptations I have ever seen.

In a move that thousands will call "tonal inconsistency" (which is correct, but misses the point spectacularly), The Punisher brilliantly juxtaposes the vicious murder of the title character's family with the stylized, over-the-top, often hilarious mayhem that our hero later unleashes. Just-retired government agent Frank Castle (Thomas Jane) sees his life crash and burn before his eyes when banker and international criminal Howard Saint (John Travolta) sends men with guns to the Castle family reunion in retribution for the death of his own son in a high-profile bust. Wearing a shirt embossed with a scary white skull -- a gift from his now-dead young son -- Castle, who narrowly escaped his own demise, methodically plans his vengeance on the killers.

That vengeance, far more ruthless and cruel than Saint's, yet executed with precisely the same motivation, bears little aesthetic resemblance to the unexpected invasion of Castle's family party. The death of Castle's loved ones is haunting and deadly serious, filmed with nary a hint of a traditional comic book mentality and in a way that threatens to bring tears to your eyes even though you always knew it was coming. The images are drained of color; the camera stumbles and shakes.

Most of Castle's revenge, by contrast, is every bit the comic book movie, overblown, cartoonish, cheerful, and usually played for laughs. "Call the Russian!" snaps an irritated Travolta, and our hero is attacked by a bleached-blond 6'10" assassin while his oblivious sidekicks perform an impromptu waltz across the courtyard. A character drops a woman off a bridge... and then she gets run over by a train. People walk across the screen and leer at the camera. Thomas Jane triumphantly ascends from the ground on a mechanical trap door with his shirt torn to shreds and hanging at his sides. The violence factor doesn't let up an inch, but the absurdity level skyrockets, and suddenly instead of being horrified, the audience is in hysterics.

The idea here is how easily we are manipulated into taking certain attitudes toward violence. I thought of that joke in Futurama wherein a depressing newsreel had Three Stooges sound effects "added to lessen tragedy." The Punisher makes the viewer go from having tears in his eyes to cheering, laughing and hooting in a matter of minutes. Because the maiming and killing is now being perpetrated by the title character, who is set up as a hero, authority figure and family man, we accept it without question despite the fact that his actions aren't an iota more justifiable than the villain's, and that the movie makes no effort to refute this.

For a while, the film's stance is unclear. Is Hensleigh, who is making his directing debut after a long career as an action screenwriter, commenting on these things or hoping that we won't notice them? The ever-increasing and clearly intentional level of absurdity made me suspect the former, but the finale made me certain of it. Our hero unloads such a terrible barrage of violence and stark cruelty that his assertion that it is "punishment, not revenge" becomes impossible to accept. There is one moment of such stunning brutality that all of the hooting and hollering we did over the past ninety minutes rushes back through us in a wave of horror and shame. The quintessential final image, which might otherwise have evoked a big cheer, can only be greeted with utter, breathtaking dread. The Punisher turns what was rollicking R-rated entertainment into a punch in the face.

There will no doubt still be those who find it hilarious through and through. This is unsurprising and even forgivable, as the film is very funny, very violent, and very courageous in its willingness to be misunderstood. But peel away a layer, and you'll find that The Punisher is asking you a question: Why are you laughing?