I don’t care what anyone else thinks… I liked The Punished damnit! Maybe that’s because I wasn’t really familiar with the comic, or that i didn’t know a lot of the ins and outs of the character… but as far as just a fun Saturday afternoon at the movies went, I had fun watching it. I thought there was some good action, some great over the top machismo one liners, and on top of that I thought Thomas Jane was PERFECT as Frank.
I’ve been supporting the idea of a Punisher 2 for a couple of years now here on The Movie Blog. Today came sad sad sad news (to me anyway). Thomas Jane, who has been championing Punisher 2, has announced he’s pulled out of the project. AICN had the following from Jane:
“I can’t tell you how completely broken up I am about it. After busting my ass at the gym four days a week for almost two years, watching every character driven action pic that any fan would ask me to watch while I was standing in line buying egg whites and Tuna fish after countless Saturday nights making notes and drinking soda water and munching on seaweed sticks while my daughter slept on my lap to the sound of automatic gunfire, (now she can’t sleep without it. I had to make a tape of automatic gunfire to play in her room at night) after hauling myself to any ‘Guns! Knifes! Ammo!’ show in any small town that I found myself in shooting Killshot or The Mist or Mutant Chronicles, after torn ligaments, screwed up rotator cuffs, thousands of $$$ on ridiculously huge vitamins, overly long conversations with frighteningly tall men about The Fastest Way To Kill Someone With Your Bare Hands, and after a dude refused to sell me a Fatburger at 2am on Santa Monica Blvd, I am, sadly – no, make that heartbrokenly – fuck it – just rip out the heart and stomp it into the pavement a couple of times – pulling out. Punisher fans are already fighting an uphill battle as it is. And I’ve always felt a responsibility to fight that fight for them and with them so that Frank Castle gets the treatment he deserves.”
I’d be very curious to know why he pulled out. He doesn’t say directly in the quote, but is almost sounds like he was frustrated with all the delays in getting it moving (although that’s just speculation on my part. Either way, I’m saddened by the news.
So Thomas Jane is out. So what do you think? Who do you feel would make a good “Punisher” (although I doubt that there even will be a Punisher 2 without Jane involved)?
