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CINEMA REVIEWS. Cont'd.
It's like the old editorial cartoon that used the same illustration of an armed thug for a Salvadoran guerrilla (a bad guy in the U.S. government's opinion) and a Nicaraguan freedom fighter (a good guy from a U.S. stance). Same person, same deadly violence, slightly different interpretation of motive. Based on the Marvel Comics character introduced in The Amazing Spider-Man in 1974, The Punisher tries to set up FBI undercover agent Frank Castle (Thomas Jane) as a noble family man so viewers will sympathize when he turns pitiless vigilante. Yet Castle's a cold fish from the start, hollowly expressing displeasure when his final undercover sting goes awry before he moves on to a peaceful life in the bureau's London office. The consequences are tragic for shady Tampa businessman Howard Saint (John Travolta), whose son is killed by the feds. Castle whines to his colleagues that no one was supposed to die, but in the leaden scenario co-written by director Jonathan Hensleigh, Castle clearly could not care less that someone else's pride and joy wound up on a slab. Egged on by his wife (Laura Harring), Saint gets payback with interest, killing Castle's wife, son, parents and dozens of other relatives at a family reunion. Castle himself is left for dead, but he recovers and returns as the Punisher, an avenging demon intent on making Saint and his loved ones suffer in spades. In the comics, Castle turned executioner of the wicked at large after losing his family in a random act of violence. In giving him a personal target, the filmmakers have turned Castle into the very thing he's hunting, a depraved killer out to spill as much blood as he can. Jane's inanimate performance doesn't help. His Castle only seems alive when he's butchering people; with his dead eyes and wooden dialogue, he's like a sleepwalker the rest of the time. The movie provokes unintentional laughs with its excessive violence and especially with its clumsy efforts to capture Castle shirtless as often as possible to show off Jane's chiselled torso. Travolta makes for a passable weasel of a heavy, and Will Patton has a moment or two as his faithful lieutenant, whom Castle sets up in a nasty ploy involving Saint's wife. Harring and the rest of the cast are generally just moving targets, including Samantha Mathis as Castle's wife and Roy Scheider as his dad. Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Ben Foster and John Pinette are tossed in as kindly neighbours in a run-down tenement where Castle establishes his revenge headquarters. The three are there only to give Castle someone decent to fight for; otherwise, nothing on screen would differentiate him from the bad guys he's battling. The one loophole on the Eighth Amendment left by the filmmakers is on the "excessive bail" aspect. Thankfully, you can bail on this awful movie any time you like, and you should do it at the ticket counter by choosing another flick.-David German.
Hell
might be an interesting place upon arrival, but it's bound to get dull after
an eon or two.
Photo: Ron Perlman as Hellboy
Likewise, Hellboy begins as a refreshingly wry alternative among the flood of gloomy comic-book heroes Hollywood has tossed on the big screen. Despite Ron Perlman's merry, self-deprecating presence as the title demon, Hellboy gradually flames out amid the usual chaos of too-loud explosions and too-numerous computer-animated beasties. The movie ends up looking like a concoction of everything remotely demonic that has come before it, a hodgepodge of X-Men, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The X-Files and Ghostbusters. Adapted from Mike Mignola's Dark Horse comics by writer-director Guillermo del Toro, Hellboy opens in the closing days of the Second World War as Hitler's occultist forces, aided by legendary lunatic Grigori Rasputin (Karel Roden), uncork a gateway from our world to hell to bring about Armageddon. An Allied strike force toasts Rasputin and company and closes the portal, but not before a bouncing baby demon with red skin, horns and a tail slips through. Intended as a harbinger of the world's end, Perlman's Hellboy instead is raised by kindly Professor Broom (John Hurt). With super strength, an arm of stone to batter down walls and invulnerability from fire, Hellboy becomes the mainstay of the U.S. government's Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defence, pummelling monsters and sending them packing back to hell. "There are things that go bump in the night," says Professor Broom. "And we are the ones who bump back." Sixty years after his previous attempt, Rasputin returns from beyond with a plot to bring Hellboy back into the fold and lay waste to Earth. Perlman has had a prolific career as a modern Lon Chaney playing creatures and disfigured figures, including the ugly half of TV's Beauty and the Beast. As Hellboy, he has a similar brute-babe relationship with the bureau's resident firebug, Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), a woman who can set things ablaze when angered. Hellboy's new FBI ally, John Myers (Rupert Evans), also ends up his rival for Liz's affection.Rounding out the cast are Jeffrey Tambor as an overbearing FBI honcho and Doug Jones as Hellboy's aquatic mutant sidekick Abe Sapien, both adding healthy doses of humour.Perlman is his own best comic relief, though, wisecracking through endless battles with hellhounds, chomping cigars, guzzling Red Bull and filing down his horns so he can fit in among polite company.Born a demon, Hellboy is a poster child for the nature-vs.-nurture debate, an example that even the baddest seed can walk the path of virtue, albeit with some side trips into adolescent hijinks.Del Toro omits the usual dark-side brooding of the superhero tempted to use his powers for personal gain, instead presenting a crusader whose flaws are simply part of his character and who approaches his job with working-class resignation.Unfortunately, after setting up this fresh blue-collar scenario in the movie's first hour, Del Toro wallows in pyrotechnics.-David German.