Die Hard with a Vengeance

With John McTiernan back in the director's chair, the series returns to its roots a bit, with a slightly more down to earth believability to John McClane's actions, as he's less about shooting everyone in sight and more concerned with figuring things out and gutting out a win. The scope of the movie itself is even bigger, as terror sweeps through all of New York City, but it has something from the first movie that the second didn't, that thing which made the first original and interesting in the first place. Anybody can make an action movie where things blow up and a foreign guy threatens people, it takes a little extra to make it as fun as this. In fact, it's pretty damn surprising that the guy who wrote the script (which wasn't originally going to be for a Die Hard movie) went on to make something as amazingly nonsensical as The Punisher. It's not the smartest thing in the world, but it's clever and funny and exciting enough to easily last through the two hours.

A lot of entertainment comes from the buddy picture quality of the story, an otherwise typical black/white dynamic when McClane gets shoved together through circumstance with an electrician from Harlem, but it's saved by the entertaining, antagonistic chemistry between Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson. They're forced to team up and race around New York while solving riddles to try and prevent bombs from going off, being teased and tricked by an enjoyably evil Jeremy Irons. Eventually though they realize the bombs are just part of a much larger and more diabolical plot, and not just a simple vendetta. The two have to use all of their wits and get the crap kicked out of them just trying to keep the bad guys from winning. By the end you're as exhausted as they are, but it was worth it because it was just about as much fun as you can have seeing a movie without it really being a great one. McTiernan may be going to jail for some of the things he's done, but you can't take away that the guy knows how to make an action movie.

The Punisher

I watched The Punisher knowing it didn't have a good reputation, but still hoping it would be a decent revenge movie. Unfortunately, the decent revenge stuff was hampered by a hard-to-like protagonist and one of the worst initial premises I've ever seen in a film. The original Punisher comic started with a normal guy named Frank Castle's family getting killed after they witness a gang execution, and him taking the law into his own hands. Not terribly brilliant, but it works. What happens in the movie does not work. Castle is an ex-soldier and undercover FBI agent, and after a gun deal he oversees goes south and a dumb criminal gets killed, his dad played by John Travolta (who's completely unconvincing as a ruthless gangster) decides to take it out Frank and his entire family. This obviously makes no sense since he was hardly responsible for what happened and killing a lawman and his extended family would result in a huge crackdown from the government, though fortunately for him it never happens for no reason and Frank Castle has to... yep, take the law into his own hands.

I could go on about how terrible this opening is, but there are other things I have to cover like how Frank's neighbors in his new slum apartment are annoying and add little to the story, how Frank's kind of a giant dick who pathologically lies to his son (before he dies) and gets a bit too sadistic with his actions when he claims to be only punishing criminals rather than getting revenge, and how inept everyone Travolta sends after our less-than-intrepid hero is. Hired assassins announce their intentions and show up at his heavily fortified apartment completely unarmed, packs of goons fail to make sure he's dead (which guarantees he'll survive) and search for him effectively, if you don't pay attention it might be a pretty enjoyable action movie, but once you do it falls apart like it was held together with chewing gum.

I did enjoy the eventual punishment for the most part, although it was hard to stomach what happens to Travolta's wife with Castle not being aware that she probably deserves it and essentially doing to the bad guys exactly what they did to him. I've been watching Hung and like Thomas Jane quite a bit on that, but he can't do a whole lot with what he has here. He was given a tough road to hoe with the material, and try as he might he just can't make Frank likable. Really, the cast isn't terrible at all, but nobody in the film comes off very well. You have to lay the blame on the director and writers. They changed the details of the origin for no reason and definitely for the worse, and fail to make anybody sympathetic on top of that. It wasn't awful, but it really didn't do anything well enough to make it worth seeing.