Story of movie The Punisher 2004 Film :
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The Punisher is a 2004 American action crime thriller film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name, starring Thomas Jane as the antihero Frank Castle/The Punisher and John Travolta as Howard Saint, a money launderer who orders the death of Castle's entire family.
| The Punisher | |
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Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Jonathan Hensleigh |
| Produced by |
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| Written by |
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| Based on | Punisher by Gerry Conway John Romita Sr. |
| Starring |
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| Music by | Carlo Siliotto |
| Cinematography | Conrad W. Hall |
| Edited by |
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Production companies |
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| Distributed by | Lionsgate Films |
Release date |
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Running time | 123 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $33 million |
| Box office | $54.7 million |
The film's 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 Presents: The Punisher #2, Marvel Super Action Featuring: The Punisher #1, The Punisher War Zone, and The Punisher War Journal. The Punisher was shot on location in Tampa, Florida, and surrounding environs in mid to late 2003. It was distributed by Lions Gate Entertainment in North America, although Artisan Entertainment, which released a 1989 film adaptation of the same name on DVD, financed and co-distributed the film with eventual Artisan owner Lionsgate, while Columbia Pictures distributed the film in non-North American countries. Screenwriter Jonathan Hensleigh agreed to helm the film during its development stage despite a dispute with Marvel Studios, marking his directorial debut.
The film was released on April 16, 2004, by Lionsgate, grossing $13 million in the United States over its opening weekend, and reached a total gross of $54 million against a budget of $33 million. It has a 29% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Marvel Comics and Lionsgate began development on a sequel, The Punisher 2, which instead became the 2008 reboot Punisher: War Zone after Jane and Hensleigh left the project due to creative differences. This would be the final film produced by Artisan Entertainment for theatrical distribution.
Screenplay
A smuggling operation in Tampa Bay results in the deaths of Bobby Saint, the son of mafia boss Howard Saint, and Otto Krieg, the arms dealer. Krieg is revealed to be undercover FBI agent and Delta Force veteran Frank Castle on his final mission before retirement. Enraged over the death of his son, Howard Saint acquires confidential information regarding Krieg and learns of his true identity. He orders Castle killed at a family reunion, while his wife Livia requests that his family be killed as well. At the reunion, Saint's men, among them Quentin Glass and Bobby's identical twin, John, kill Castle's entire family and shoot Castle, leaving him for dead. Castle survives and is nursed back to health by a local fisherman.
With the police and FBI unwilling to pursue the killers due to Saint's power and influence, Castle moves into an abandoned apartment occupied by three outcasts, Joan, Bumpo and Dave, and begins his mission to bring the Saints down. With information provided by Mickey Duka, one of Saint's more benevolent and disgruntled associates, Castle studies the Saint family and learns their every move, in the process discovering Glass to be a closeted homosexual. He openly attacks Saint's business and sabotages his partnership with his Cuban partners.
Saint discovers Castle is alive and sends assassins to kill him. The first, Harry Heck, ambushes Castle on a bridge but is killed when Castle slits his throat with a ballistic knife. The second, a Russian behemoth, nearly beats Castle to death in his own apartment. Castle kills him by dousing his face in boiling oil and pushing him down a flight of stairs, breaking his neck. John, Glass and the goons arrive for Castle. The tenants hide Castle and refuse to disclose his location, despite Glass pulling Dave's piercings out with pliers. They leave one of their men to intercept Castle, but Castle kills him after they leave.
With Mickey's help, Castle arranges for Glass to be at certain places posing as an anonymous blackmailer while planting Livia's car in the same location, and ultimately placing one of Livia's earrings in Glass's bed, leading Saint to believe they are having an affair. Saint confronts and kills Glass in his own home by stabbing him to death, and throws Livia onto a railroad, where she is run over by a train. With Saint despondent, Castle assaults Saint's club and kills every last member of his mob, among them John, though Saint, wounded, escapes. Castle pursues him and shoots him. As Saint lies dying, Castle reveals his schemes that led Saint to kill his friend and wife, and ties him to a car leading to a car park laced with explosives. Saint dies in the subsequent explosion.
Castle returns home and prepares to kill himself with his mission fulfilled, but sees a vision of his wife and changes his mind, instead deciding to continue to fight crime as the Punisher. He leaves some of Saint's money as a farewell gift to the tenants for protecting him. The film ends with Castle standing alone on the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, as he vows, "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".
- Thomas Jane as Frank Castle/The Punisher
- John Travolta as Howard Saint
- Will Patton as Quentin Glass
- Rebecca Romijn as Joan
- Ben Foster as Spacker Dave
- John Pinette as Nathaniel Bumpo
- Samantha Mathis as Maria Castle
- Marcus Johns as Will Castle
- Russell Andrews as Agent James Weeks
- James Carpinello as Bobby Saint/John Saint
- Laura Harring as Livia Saint
- Eddie Jemison as Mickey Duka
- Eduardo Yáñez as Mike Toro
- Omar Avila as Joe Toro
- Kevin Nash as The Russian
- Mark Collie as Harry Heck
- Roy Scheider as Frank Castle Sr.
- Tom Nowicki as Lincoln
- Veryl Jones as Candelaria
- Marco St. John as Chief Morris
- Hank Stone as Cutter
Hensleigh and Arad said in many interviews that Jane was the first and only actor to be asked to play the title role. Arad had previously pursued Jane for other roles in Marvel Studios films. He turned down the Punisher twice, as he did not see himself as a superhero actor. Jane said, when asked the second time to play the Punisher, that he became interested when Arad sent Tim Bradstreet's artwork of the character. After learning more about the Punisher, he accepted. Jane went on to read as many Punisher comics he could find to understand the character, and became a fan of the Punisher in the process. Jane trained for six to seven months with the United States Navy SEALs and gained more than twenty pounds of muscle for the part.
| 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 |
Marvel Studios began development for a new Punisher film as early as 1997. In 2000, Marvel made a long-term agreement with Artisan Entertainment to turn 15 of their characters into films and TV shows, among them The Punisher with Gale Anne Hurd to produce. The Punisher marked Marvel's first major independent release as an equity owner, whereby it contributes characters and creative support to lower-budget pics in exchange for a financial stake in the negative cost. Screenwriter Jonathan Hensleigh signed on in April 2002, and The Punisher also became his directing debut. The story and plot were mainly based on two Punisher comic book stories, Welcome Back, Frank and The Punisher: Year One. Hensleigh explained he had to excise much of the influence from Welcome Back, Frank as it would have likely been a four-hour-long film.
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 $33 million, with only $15.5 million going towards the shooting budget and post-production for the film, with only 52 days to shoot, which is half the time allocated for most action pictures. Most of Hensleigh's original script had to be edited and re-written many times due to budget issues. According to the DVD commentary, the first scene in the film 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.
Principal photography for The Punisher began in July 2003 on location in Tampa, Florida. The Florida location was first chosen at the insistence of screenwriter Michael France, who advised Marvel and Artisan that "it would be cheap to shoot - that they'd get a lot more for their money than in New York or Chicago" as well as wanting to use "both sunny locations, and dark, industrial locations" in the screenplay. For inspiration, Hensleigh and cinematographer Conrad W. Hall looked at dozens of action films 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, though 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.
During shooting, Lionsgate (then known as Lions Gate Films) purchased Artisan. In an interview with Hensleigh, Hensleigh said that even though the film is distributed under the Lionsgate imprint, 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. Instead the character of Mickey Duka (who was heavily based upon the character Mickey Fondozzi) serves as an ally of Frank Castle. Regarding the exclusion of Microchip, Hensleigh had this to say:
There are a couple of years where I didn't 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 doesn't just go around blowing people away; he uses guile and cunning just as much as he does weaponry and physical combat.
Box office
The Punisher opened in 2,649 theaters on April 16, 2004, and grossed $13.8 million over its opening weekend, ranking at #2 at the box office. The film has a US gross of $33.8 million and a foreign gross of $20.9 million, giving it a worldwide total of $54.7 million.
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