The Punisher is another macho revenge picture; gorier and more sadistic than most. Strangely enough, this doesn’t make it unique, only typical. It’s difficult but tempting to analyze the psychology of the Hollywood movie machine. All the movies that it produces, in the summer movie season particularly, exist for no other reason then to make gobs and gobs of money. That has to be the rationale behind The Punisher, isn’t it? Otherwise, why would the movie exist? In recent years the movies have been pushing the limits of acceptable levels of on-screen violence further and further. The Kill Bill films, Marcus Nispel’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Bad Boys II and The Passion of the Christ have all seemed to set new standards. All of those films are so brutal and sadistic that it’s difficult to keep your jaw up watching them. Even Freddy vs. Jason seems to be bloodier than any of the films from either villain’s respective franchise. It’s not just violence, it’s righteous violence. It’s OK to see Jesus being torn apart; because in watching the movie we’re indulging in masochistic guilt. It’s our fault that he’s being tortured, he’s dying for our sins. The violence in Bad Boys II is even more disturbing. The heroes can kill people because they are the morally superior ones, because the people that they killing are drug dealers, and by extension, terrorists. (Kill Bill and the slasher movies are much more complex in their attitudes towards violence. In the first Kill Bill the violence was all for effect. In the second Kill Bill the very justification of her revenge is curiously muddled. The slasher movies always acted like a median between masochistic violence and sadistic violence. On a superficial level we sympathize with the victims, but we get high on the fear for their lives, and eventually the killing is for effect and we celebrate the killer for providing us with cool kills. The morality of the violence in the slasher film is much more complex than it initially sounds.) These movies made pretty good money by the way. Kill Bill: Vol. 1 grossed about 70 million. Vol. 2 pulled in 55 million. Texas Chainsaw Massacre grossed 80 million. Bad Boys II crossed the hundred million dollar mark, and Passion of the Christ is nearing the FOUR hundred million dollar mark. There is some wisdom in peddling a bit of the ole ultraviolence it seems, the people are eating it up.

Believe it or not, I’m not at all concerned about this new trend. In fact, I’m sort of excited about it. Graphic violence is hard to feel emotionally neutral about. The people who found these movies to be yawners are either posers or serial killers. I support the crunched bone, the torn ligament, the exploding brain matter. Violence is visceral and cinematic. It gets you high. Pauline Kael wrote a famous essay on “Fear of Movies,” saying that her liberal friends hate the sight of blood, that they “hiss at it, like it wasn’t in their bodies.” Those scared of movies only watch stuff that they know won’t challenge them or stir them up. I hate the people that are scared of movies so much that I’ll even celebrate (to an extent) the fascist entertainments of Oliver Stone and Alan Parker that Kael rejected. It’s generally better to be offensive and hateful than cuddly. Aim your sites on the middling fifty-year-old ladies that we saw weeping at Deep Impact, dear readers. They are going to destroy cinema, leaving it an art form made for and by Care Bears.

The antithesis to The Punisher is Kevin Bray’s remake of Walking Tall. Walking Tall tells the tale of a returning soldier played by The Rock who finds the town that he left now ruled by a corrupt casino that fixes their games and (natch) sells drugs to the Rock’s tween nephew. The Rock decides to clean up the town, with a little help courtesy of a giant two-by-four and Johnny Knoxville. The film has some very tasty-looking women in various stages of undress. The action setpieces are impressive. Bray is a film school brat (I think I read but can’t confirm) and a music video veteran. The film has some real filmmaking excitement to it. And it’s also rated PG-13 and runs under 80 minutes. Complicating things further is the fact that The Rock is enormously charismatic. I actually think that he may refuse to be in R-rated movies because he knows that kids look up to him. That isn’t something that I read or heard; it’s just a vibe I get from the man. There is something inconsequential and amiable about Walking Tall. It’s a harmless waste of a Saturday afternoon. If the film was about anything else than what it is about, it may have been enjoyable. As it is about what it is about, it’s sort of repulsive. Walking Tall has a courtroom scene that would have been hilarious if it wasn’t so sad, where the Rock, on trial for vandalism and assault at the casino, gives a speech to the jury about how if they acquit him he promises to run for sheriff and bring pride back to the town. They acquit him even though, of course, he’s obviously guilty of the crime. In the Walking Tall universe the Constitution of the United States seems to be a construction designed by the power elite to oppress and exploit the masses. It’s impossible to be stirred or challenged by Walking Tall. It chews your food for you. The film reduces important issues of class, power and, of course, justice to the level of a cartoon. Now, what if Rock got the villain alone and pounded his skull into the pavement with his long thick stick of wood, and we were given close-ups of the guy’s teeth cracking and the fissure of his skull opening, gray matter oozing out. That’s not gratuitous, that’s honest. That’s punishing us by giving us what we want. That’s even moral. The Punisher isn’t that graphic. It’s graphic, but I don’t think its graphic enough. (Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Passion were graphic enough.) But The Punisher gives us a taste. And there is a heat to the film. There is a cruelty and anger to it. On a primitive level, there is an excitement in seeing the bad guys get theirs. Yes, you could argue that it’s bad to enjoy seeing people get killed in gruesome ways, but that is just the kind of argument that justifies the violence. It allows for some moral ambiguity.

There are two scenes that don’t even have any real violence to them but they are among the most disturbing that I’ve seen in a long while. Well, the first is really more of a subplot. In order to get revenge on the thugs that killed his family, the Punisher pulls a little prank that he stole from “Othello.” He convinces the head villain (John Travolta) that his best friend had been sleeping with his wife. Travolta kills both of them. It’s excruciating to watch. Travolta killed the Punisher’s family because the Punisher was responsible for the death of HIS son during a routine sting operation. The filmmakers establish that the bad guys are a family. They’re evil, they’re criminals, but they are a family. Seeing Travolta kill his loved ones, his emotional insecurities being manipulated by The Punisher likes strings on a puppet is certainly more painful than any of the physical punishments that the Punisher can dole out. It’s more sadistic as well. The Punisher says that what he is doing is not vengeance, as vengeance is an emotional response. This is punishment. Travolta is punished because he is human. Because he is emotional, vengeful and vulnerable. Because he continues to have ties to his family. The Punisher cuts them off once he is resurrected into hyper-masculine superhero. The second disturbing scene is one where the Punisher tortures one of Travolta’s cronies for information. He strips him down, hangs him by the feet, and brandishes a blowtorch. Once that blow torch touches skin, the crony is told, all he will feel is cold and all he will smell is the burning of meat. The Punisher uses the blowtorch on a piece of raw steak however, and sticks a cold popsicle on the guy’s back, making him think that he’s being physically tortured. The scene is played for laughs, which is upsetting enough, but it is also strangely reminiscent of something…..

It is of course, impossible to really predict while making it how anybody would be viewing The Punisher when it actually came out. In recent months, however, reality has clearly caught up with The Punisher and lapped it. I found it difficult to watch the popsicle scene and not think about the photos of the Iraqi prison. And pertinent to justifying the violence of the film, the Nick Berg execution was present in my mind while watching the picture. What bothers me about the Nick Berg execution is that the major media outlets would not show it. What bothers me even more is the news that a few teachers in California were arrested for telling their students where they COULD SEE the execution online. For PERMITTING them to see it. I mean, at the very least couldn’t local affiliates show it at a late hour? And what harm could come from telling students where they COULD SEE the execution? They aren’t forcing them to see it, they are giving them the INFORMATION!! And it’s important that we see the execution. There are two ways that we could interpret the image of the actual execution: 1. Gee, our troops and civilians going to Iraq aren’t going there to be tickled. 2. We are dealing with fucking barbarians. Including it does not necessarily benefit either political agenda in other words. Yes, your beliefs towards the war in Iraq could be reinforced, but they could also be challenged. I felt that mine were. I guess that I knew that the Iraqi terrorists were barbaric, but it doesn’t sink in until you see the decapitation. But I also think that you need to see the image and think about it, before you can support the war either. Also important, is how can we evaluate the statements of George Bush and Colin Powell if we haven’t seen the video? Before seeing the video, a good part of me thought that they were putting some spin on this; after seeing I’ve turned around. The media is really fucking over the American people. We really shouldn’t stand for this. What is their excuse for not showing it anyway? Good taste? They don’t want to upset anybody? People are dying, excuse me if we’re interrupting your mashed potatoes and Salisbury steak. Out of respect for the Berg family? That very concept puts the individual above the needs of society and thus invalidates the very idea of war. I really think that this is more important than their emotional comfort. The media has failed to do their job. Images speak more than words. They mean more. Now there is indeed some doubt as to the validity of the video itself. Some people may think it is a hoax. What I would really like, then, is for the broadcast stations to show the video and have the doubters explain their case shot by shot. I don’t want to get hung up on this specific example, what I’m attacking is the mindset that unanimously decided that the American people don’t need to see this. And I’m attacking the people who wear these emotional chastity belts. Who have opinions on a war that they have never seen and refuse to see, and thus know nothing about. What I’m attacking the pussy-footing around everything.

The problem with George Bush, obviously, is that he thinks he’s sending The Rock over to Iraq, when he is really sending over the Punisher. If he sat in the front row of just a few of the executions that he supported during his reign as Governor of Texas, I would certainly have more respect for him. People buy into this “eye for an eye” stuff, but they do it while wearing rubber gloves. That describes Walking Tall in a nutshell. The Berg execution is far beyond the pale, worse than the photographs humiliating the Iraqi prisoners. Not much worse, mind you, as torturing Iraqi prisoners of war is certainly very repugnant as well. One of the intriguing things about The Punisher is that it only partially works in terms of a direct allegory. Who is Iraq and who is the U.S.? Notice that Travolta strikes only when the Punisher messes his shit up in a routine day of work. Travolta is then Iraq, and the Punisher is the U.S. The popsicle puts the Punisher on the level of the U.S., but his “punishments” are certainly closer to the level of violence that we saw from the Iraqi terrorists. The moral ambiguity seems to be the point of the film. The Punisher is not a happy guy. He lives next to Rebecca Romijn-Stamos and her goofy friends. They want to start a family with him. She tells him that he can make memories, good ones, and doing this will save his life. He rejects her. He would rather kill a bottle of Wild Turkey. When he is finished with his revenge he feels curiously unsatisfied, much like Tom Wilkinson in In the Bedroom. The difference between In the Bedroom and The Punisher, of course, is that In the Bedroom is an art film and The Punisher is a popcorn film. In the Bedroom then acknowledges the void and laments it. The Punisher is a more cynical and thus sadly more emotionally developed work. It suggests that the only thing that we can hope to get high on after the carnage is the revenge. At the end of the picture, the Punisher puts a loaded gun to his head and thinks about pulling the trigger. He doesn’t go through of course, opting to clean up other cities instead.

Aside from the emotional honesty of the violence in a growingly sanitized genre, how does the film do just as a movie? Well, it starts off slow, a little too chatty and little too corny, but it picks up once the heavy killing starts. The filmmakers have found two terrific super villains with “Harry Heck,” the evil version of Johnny Cash who sings a ballad to the Punisher before meeting up with him later to execute him, and with “The Russian,” a bodybuilder in a striped shirt who smiles when he gets a knife in the pectoral. The film has just the right comic book vibe; the characters aren’t played for laughs but for their hipster iconology. The brawl between the Punisher and the Russian which is scored by an operatic aria, surprisingly enough, outclasses the trailer fight between the Bride and Elle Driver in Kill Bill: Vol. 2. It’s really a splendid stretch of cinema.

The Punisher’s genre isn’t only typical, its style is typical. American cinema develops a different voice in each decade. The ‘30s were light, bubbly, and witty. The ‘40s added a dose of cynicism to the mix, the musicals and westerns not being quite the same as they were in the ‘30s. Frank Capra was passé. The ‘50s was the age of Cinescope. The ‘60s was the age of Cinescope with a dose of sexual and social liberation and another dose of cynicism. The ‘70s was something new: hyper-reality, life not movies. As cynical as they come. The ‘80s codified and set standards to the freedoms of the ‘60s and ‘70s, bringing back the giant Cinescope blockbuster changed and altered however by the ‘60s and ‘70s. The ‘90s had seen it all; it was the age of irony, of cannibalization. Romantic comedies went back to the ‘30s and the hyper-reality of the ‘70s and the cynicism and pessimism of earlier cinema had leaked out. And now we are in the ‘00s, where following a brief spate of sequels, American cinema has rediscovered the remake. Walking Tall, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Helter Skelter, The Stepford Wives and Dawn of the Dead have all enjoyed remakes recently. These were films from the ‘70s, but the filmmakers aren’t mimicking the ‘70s; they are dragging the films through the ‘80s and ‘90s. The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre was raw, but the remake made a fetish out the decay. What we are experiencing in the ‘00s is, of course, the ‘90s with a dose of cynicism. There is a moment of clarity while watching The Punisher that I realized that it’s a strange freaking movie. The movie references a few recent films -- The Crow, Pulp Fiction, Terminator 2: Judgment Day -- but it also pays tribute to Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad & the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West, as well as The Cowboys and The Wild Bunch in having the villain die by being dragged by the feet from a moving car. If you want to understand what is happening in film today, take a good look at Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West in particular. Once Upon a Time in the West is said to be a “superwestern,” but now everything is a super-whatever. The Olsen Twins’ New York Minute is a “superlight-comedy,” basically Francis Ford Coppola’s already garish segment in New York Stories made even more garish. The Punisher is obviously a “superrevenge-movie,” akin to the “superwestern.” I can't imagine movies ever getting as huge as they are now. (See also the recent Van Helsing. It's just unreal!) We understand that The Punisher is not a human being but a hypermasculine icon, and that he finds his reduction to a hypermasculine icon to be a moral imperative. I have supported this kind of filmmaking in earlier essays, and a good deal of me says this as a detached observer, but I have to wonder if the human being will become passé in upcoming years.

With all that said and done, I don't believe that The Punisher is a great movie; really, it is a slightly above average specimen of what is going on right now in film as entertainment and social comment. As pure film, Kill Bill: Vol. 1 is certainly the best of the bunch. Not an ounce of fat, and it’s smart. As the synthesis between entertainment and social comment, I think that Bad Boys II is superior in that its comedy is more dehumanizing then the gloomy approach that The Punisher takes, and as it doesn't plug itself into the machinery of a plot we feel that we are basically just taking a wallow in the mud. The moral ambiguity comes off stronger in Bad Boys II. I think. Both Kill Bill: Vol.1 and Bad Boys II have a stronger level of violence and all that comes with that than The Punisher, but The Texas Chainsaw Massacre trumps all three of them. I'd rather you see Bad Boys II, Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, all out now on DVD, than The Punisher, in other words. But yeah, there are some really terrific sequences in the picture and it pretty much gets the job done. This is a juicy little specimen.