The Punisher vs Narc

The Punisher’s logo is one of the coolest in comic books. A simple black shirt with a huge white skull in front. Bad guys see that skull coming at them, and know their time is up. I’ve read the comics from time to time, but I’ve never heard officially where the skull motif originated. In the newest film adaptation of the Punisher comic, Frank Castle receives a skull t-shirt as a gift from his son. It’s a touching moment between father and son. They’re on vacation in Puerto Rico, and young Castle bought the shirt at a market as a surprise. Apparently, the enormous skull wards off evil. Frank is moved, but I couldn’t help thinking, man, lucky he didn’t go with some bootleg Calvin and Hobbes shirt, or maybe “I went to Puerto Rico and all I got was mowed down.”

A couple scenes earlier, Frank’s undercover for one last FBI sting. He’s wearing a horrible disguise—blonde wig, pastel suit, vague European accent—and sets up a guns-for-cash deal. The feds crash the party and almost everyone goes down in a hail of bullets, including Frank and one of bad guy Howard Saint’s sons. Saint is played by John Travolta, his wife by Laura Harring. Their sons seem to be late twenties/early thirties, which makes Harring somewhat of medical miracle. When Saint orders that Castle be hunted down and killed as revenge, the wife ups the order: “His family. His whole family.” The whole family it is. The. Whole. Family. We’re talking cousins here. Everybody’s down in Puerto Rico for a family reunion (I suppose Castle has a house there. They act like it’s a temporary vacation, but they brought their dead dog’s house, so…), and Saint’s goons sneak up and gun everybody down. Frank and his dad take a couple of them out, but eventually, everyone related to him—including in-laws—is dead. Frank almost gets away, but he’s beaten, shot, dumped in the ocean and blown up. It’s not like he kind of gets shot. He’s shot point blank in the chest, among other places. A few minutes later, he climbs out onto a rock, only seeming a little winded. He’s taken in by a mysterious man, who, as far as I can tell, cures Frank by giving him a tree limb to hobble around on and having him grow a beard.

Five months later, Frank has revenge on his mind, and is living in a tiny apartment building with three other tenants. We have Rebecca Romijn-Stamos as a lonely waitress in an abusive relationship (she’s especially lonely because she works by herself at the filthiest diner ever where the only customers are her two neighbors.) Next door is a chubby gourmet named Bumpo, and two doors down is Dave, a quirky pierced kid played by Ben Foster, from Six Feet Under. At first, Frank’s neighbors are scared and curious, partly because he’s been in the papers and all over the news for being dead, and then not being dead. When an undercover F.B.I. agent is presumed dead, but there’s no body, does he make the front page of the papers for being dead anyway? How many famous undercover F.B.I. agents are there? Isn’t the point of undercover agents that we don’t know who they are?

Frank doesn’t just get blood revenge, he’s also after humiliation, the bulk of which he executes through a complicated prank to make Saint believe his wife is cheating on him. How complicated? It involves a fake fire hydrant. Twice. Where does one get a fake fire hydrant? And how far down the list of revenge plots is that? Do you need the fake fire hydrant more than, say, the fake phone booth? What about a newspaper with eye holes cut out, or maybe a camouflage helmet with tree limbs?

I believed that Frank was angry and hurt and wanted his revenge, but I never wanted revenge for him. Sure, his wife and son and grandma and uncles and so on were slaughtered, but we never get to know any of them, so who cares? Here’s what we learn: the kid misses his dead dog, he’s tired of moving, and he has good taste in t-shirts. The wife, played by Samantha Mathis, somehow has even less to do. She’s barely said “We’re not lucky, we’re blessed” before…you know. We don’t know anything about them, so it matters little that they’re gone. So, when Frank Castle is out handing out punishment, and he’s making it take forever, I never really understood why. He’s not really making Howard Saint suffer; all of that happens at the end. Why not just drive up to Howard Saint’s house and take care of business? Instead, he prolongs his own torture, drinking and contemplating suicide and making his neighbors nervous. Drowning Pool hired a new lead singer for this?

So, is The Punisher nothing but clichés and cheese? Yeah, kind of. Is it worth your time? Yeah, kind of. Considering the simultaneously confusing and flimsy script, the acting is all pretty good. Thomas Jane probably wouldn’t have been my first choice to play the Punisher (see below), but he’s good. John Travolta is playing a variation on the part he played in Swordfish, only here he’s actually kind of subtle and imposing. Frank’s neighbors damn near steal the show, especially during an extended sequence in the middle of the movie where they stage an impromptu Thanksgiving in an attempt to invite Frank into their family. I especially liked Foster and Romijn-Stamos, who elevate their scenes above the sitcom-level stuff they seem aimed at.

The Punisher was directed by Jonathan Hensleigh, but you’d never know it by looking. The Punisher, despite being adapted from a comic book, looks like any other standard action movie circa 1989. The action in The Punisher is pretty generic stuff (there’s not much stunt-wise that is any more original than what you might find in, say, the last Punisher movie), but there are two scenes that are so weird and original, I wished they were longer. One involves the Russian, an enormous brute sent to take care of the Punisher once and for all. They throw down, tearing Frank’s entire apartment building apart, in a fight more creative and fun than anything else in the movie. Another thug sent after Frank is a guitar-playing hitman who seems to have wondered in out of a David Lynch movie. The ending, of course, sets The Punisher up for a sequel. Here’s hoping it’s more like these two scenes, and less like, you know, everything else.

If I’m not mistaken, The Punisher is designed to evoke a certain mood from its audience. It’s dark, gritty and cynical, and wants to place us within the Punisher’s world of dingy diners and flaming parking lots. Without a more compelling story, though, ugly scenery is just…ugly. Narc is equally gritty and ugly and dark, but it’s full of energy and possibility. During Punisher, I couldn’t quite place my finger on what was missing. Now I realize I was wanting Narc all along.

Narc is a movie about cops, but it’s not a buddy movie, and doesn’t feature one of the characters close to retirement. Also, and this is going to sound weird: Neither of the cops is played by Morgan Freeman. I know, I know, but trust me. They’re still good cops. Well, kind of.

Narc opens with an exhilarating foot chase, with the camera running every step with the characters, so that we get random environmental noises as they pass, and an odd sense of peripheral vision that normally doesn’t accompany scenes like this. At the end of the chase, a shot is fired, and instead of its intended drug-dealing victim, the bullet hits a pregnant woman in a park. The shooter is Nick, played by Jason Patric. He’s put on suspension, which normally in movies like this is a huge insult to the cop in question. Nick though, seems kind of relieved to be home with his wife and new baby. Patric is often good, but he’s pretty exceptional in Narc. He’s believable as a dad and a cop. When he goes back to work, it’s against better judgment, but it’s what has to be done. It’s been a year or so since his suspension, and he’s been assigned as the partner to Henry (Ray Liotta), whose partner was recently murdered.

Henry is a bad dude. Remember Denzel Washington’s character in Training Day? Henry makes him look like the guy from Blue’s Clues. The second guy from Blue’s Clues. Henry is a good cop, and seemingly a good person too, he’s just a little…over-dedicated. Nick is shocked by Henry’s brutal techniques, especially since they’re often illegal. Planting evidence? Check. Beating the snot out of potential witnesses? Sure. As the solution to the case draws nearer, Narc gets darker and dirtier by the second. Even Busta Rhymes ends up a bloody mess. By the time Nick realizes that Henry is potentially bad news, he finds himself being pushed to the sidelines in the case. Nick’s investigation and secrecy in trying to simultaneously protect Henry while collecting evidence against him is one of those turns the movie takes from which you know absolutely no good can come (meaning, it’s pretty cool).

Writer and director Joe Carnahan keeps Narc going a constant pace. There are several moments for characterization (more for Patric and Liotta than anyone else, obviously.), but the story never lags, and that’s a good thing. Movies that are filmed in a stylized manner only get distracting if the story is slow. Is Narc depressing, ugly, and brutal? Yeah, at times it is. Is it slow? Nope. And the performances are fantastic. Ray Liotta (probably perfect as the Punisher, I’m just saying) is the best he’s been in years. Henry is a madman, but gains our sympathy by never being inhuman. He’s not a monster, he’s just very, very troubled. And by troubled, I mean, you know, he’ll shoot you if you don’t do what he says. If you do what he says, he’ll merely tie you up and beat your face and maybe cut you. Ultimately, he’s the villain, I suppose, even though he’s not really behaving that much differently than the Punisher. It seems unfair that a t-shirt would make that much difference.

The Punisher: C-
Narc: B+