The Punisher puts down his weapons to chat

Thomas Jane, perhaps best known for his roles in "The Sweetest Thing," "61*", and "Deep Blue Sea," will soon be starring as Frank Castle, the anti-hero lead of the popular cult "Punisher" comic books. Jane recently took a break from his schedule and sat down with the Daily to talk about superheroes, Mickey Mantle, and the problem with the action movies genre today.



Tufts Daily: You've mentioned the cult following that "The Punisher," and all comic books to a certain extent, carry with them. Did that add pressure for you, worrying that these people would really be upset with your portrayal of their icon?



Thomas Jane: Well you're going to get that no matter what. No matter what you bring to the screen, some people aren't going to be happy and that's just the way it is; there's no way around that.

So I just concentrated on making myself happy with what we were doing with Frank Castle, and my interpretation of that. I can't worry about making everyone happy because everyone has a different take on who he is.

It's one of the interesting things about playing a fictional character that's loved by so many people. When I played [New York Yankee legend Mickey] Mantle, he was a real guy, and that's who he was, and so I had a template to draw from. You know, with Frank, he's got a bunch of different authors, and a bunch of different people drawing him, and a lot of generations that he changes and goes through, and everyone has their favorite period. But me and the director Jonathan Hensleigh drew from what we felt was the best and the most definitive Frank Castle that we had read, and we took that and brought that to the screen.

We wanted to do an origin story because we wanted to do more than one ["Punisher" movie]; we set it up that way from the beginning. We don't make any apologies for it; we knew what we wanted to do with the particular kind of movie we wanted to make.

The character was born in 1976, when the "Dirty Harry" movies were coming out, Charles Bronson was a big star, and it was the 200th anniversary of the right to bear arms and freedom from a regime. I think in the '70s, there was a celebration of that, and we wanted to bring that back in our movie. Our movie is a throwback film and Frank Castle is a throwback character. But given the condition of the world today, I think we're ready to revisit that. The anti-hero once again has a place in the social fabric of our country. It's a good time for Frank to come back.



TD: Even though Frank Castle is a Marvel Comics character, I've noticed that he's really different; he's not Spider-Man. He's just a guy, a pissed off father. With a lot of guns.



TJ: That's right. Yeah, he doesn't have any super powers. That was interesting to me. I don't see myself playing a superhero; per se. Frank Castle is the perfect kind of guy for me because I've always wanted to be in these kinds of movies. The movies they do today, with the over-use of special effects, under-use of character and story, really turned me off of the action genre for a long time. But it's that genre that got me into acting in the first place; watching those old movies on TV with my dad. So I was really excited about this movie.



TD: You said it before; movies today have gone in a different direction. This movie certainly is more character based, it really is kind of old-school.



TJ: The more you can identify with a character, the higher the stakes are raised; the more peril you experience as an audience member. That opens the door to just having a lot of fun. I hope that we get to make more movies like that. It takes a certain sensibility to get that done.

I don't know if there's been a chance for that with our action stars of late. Some of the guys that have come up recently haven't been given the opportunity to expand upon a two-dimensional character. It's an evolution. You start out with Steve McQueen or Clint Eastwood, where there are a couple of car chases and some shootouts, then you get into Stallone, and there are a lot of car chases, a lot of people dying, and a lot of one-liners. Then you graduate to Schwarzenegger, where everyone dies, everybody blows up, and he says maybe four words in the movie. Then it just escalates.

Now we've got movies like "XXX," where you don't know what the hell is going on. There are people flying out of cars, falling off bridges, windsurfing into Corvettes, and it's just totally ridiculous. It becomes eye-candy for the MTV generation. And it's just total crap. It's complete excrement. The balance is off. These movies insult my intelligence. Hopefully this movie will help bring the genre back the other way.



TD: A good bad guy is essential to a good action movie. In John Travolta [who plays Howard Saint, a corrupt businessman], you have a great one.



TJ: Yeah, which is really validating. Travolta has taken criticism in the past for being over the top and winking at the camera in some of his performances, which I think worked for what they were. But he needed a return to his great understated style because he's a fantastic actor. He's an icon; he's one of the best. To see him come back and turn in a solid, real performance was a genuine pleasure. He brings a real weight to the film.



TD: It seems like you, as an actor, are more interested in the understated roles; you don't want to talk about how life is a box of chocolates. It's a Harrison Ford kind of thing.



TJ: Well you know, Harrison Ford is a vastly underappreciated actor. He's never going to win an Oscar because you can't see him acting, whereas in actuality, that's the best kind of acting there is. Vincent Van Gogh didn't sell a single painting because people didn't see the skill; it looked like a child had spilled paint onto the page. It's artless.