Background
Marvel Comics first introduced Frank Castle, the vigilante known as The Punisher, in February 1974, as a supporting character in The Amazing Spider-Man. Castle arrived in a popular culture that had responded strongly to loner anti-heroes like Gene Hackman's Popeye Doyle (The French Connection) and Clint Eastwood's Harry Callahan (Dirty Harry, Magnum Force), cops who confronted urban crime on their own unsparing terms. July 1974 - five months after The Punisher's debut - saw the premiere of the controversial Death Wish, starring Charles Bronson as a New York architect turned vigilante. Comments Marvel Studios CEO and producer Avi Arad, "Like movies, comics are reflective of the time in which they are being published. The Punisher is a byproduct of 70's anxieties about crime and social breakdown."

From the beginning, The Punisher stood out in the Marvel universe as a different kind of superhero. He had no supernatural gifts. His skills - whether hand-to-hand combat, weapons mastery, or battlefield strategizing - were strictly organic. The Punisher was flesh and blood, like his readers. He proved so popular that he was given his own series, and by 1990 was starring in as many as three titles a month. In recent years, the franchise has reinvented itself with a series of sharply written, evocatively illustrated books by writer Garth Ennis and illustrator Steve Dillon, whose titles include Welcome Back Frank series. In 2000, The Punisher re-emerged as one Marvel's top-selling solo books and remains a top seller for the company.

Recent years have seen the overwhelming success of films based on Marvel Comic characters, including X-Men and X2: X-Men United, Spider-Man, Daredevil and The Hulk. Inasmuch as the character of the Punisher is not the typical Marvel superhero, the company felt a film version of The Punisher would also have to forge its own distinct path. Says Marvel's Ari Arad, the film's co-producer, "The Punisher is gritty and real, and we wanted to make a movie that reflected that."

Producer Gale Anne Hurd, who produced The Hulk, quickly committed to the project. "The Punisher is the kind of film that I want to see as a moviegoer and that attracted me to the project from the very beginning," she remarks. "I'd read the Welcome Back Frank trade paperback, and I loved the fact that this was a different kind of hero. Frank Castle doesn't have superpowers. What he does have is skills and abilities from his military training and the power and athleticism to pull them off."

Marvel and Hurd took the project to Jonathan Hensleigh, screenwriter of such action blockbusters as The Rock, Con-Air, Armageddon and Die Hard with a Vengeance. Says Marvel executive producer Kevin Feige, "We're all fans of Jonathan's work. We wanted him to direct something for us, and we'd submitted different projects to him; but nothing had clicked. Jonathan's a very straightforward guy, like Frank Castle. He tells it like it is, and we thought he'd be perfect for The Punisher."

Hensleigh sat down to read the Welcome Back Frank series, and didn't put it down until he finished about two hours later. Looking back, he says, "It happens very infrequently in your career, where it's just like a light switch is thrown. You know you're right for something. I got on the phone, called up Marvel and said, 'I'm committing to this.' It quite literally was that simple."

Hensleigh responded to both the subject and tone of the comic. "I like revenge stories," he remarks. "The problem with revenge stories is that they're a staple of American cinema and because of that, the genre is a little shopworn. But this particular revenge story held my interest - it brought a fresh coat of paint to the genre. It had a starkness to it, and also a sweetness with the ancillary characters. The tenement apartment dwellers were very prominent in the Welcome Back Frank series. I think that they had a great deal to do with my attraction to the story. It wasn't just nihilistic."

The Story/Adaptation

In writing the screenplay, Hensleigh expanded on the comic's seminal theme of revenge, creating new characters and a storyline that would allow the film to approach the subject from multiple perspectives. In the original comic, Frank Castle becomes a vigilante after his family is killed in a random act of violence in Central Park. Hensleigh adapted the original story, crafting a darker scenario in which Castle's entire family is the target of a criminal's merciless vendetta - a vendetta that has its roots in Castle's work for the FBI. Castle's rage is thus compounded with a sense of guilt, and the wrenching knowledge that the governmental structures he trusted to protect him and his family failed. Comments Hurd, "Frank Castle has always believed that there is a good reason to follow orders. He has always believed that, to uphold the values that were instilled in him in the military, violence is sometimes justified. That whole philosophy comes home to roost when his family is killed. When he realizes that justice is not forthcoming for the perpetrators of that crime, he finds himself in a position to take on that mantle, to become a vigilante in order to, in his mind, serve justice."

Hensleigh structured the script to juxtapose two stories of reprisal - Castle's and his adversary's. "It's a movie about revenge, and I wanted to look at the different facets of revenge," he explains. "I meant to show that there's sort of a righteous revenge, and a corrupt revenge."

Saint is a thoroughly modern criminal, who has used his illicitly acquired wealth to further his standing in the community. While laundering the profits of drug and prostitution rings, he has also launched legitimate businesses, including a car dealership and a gentleman's club called Saints and Sinners. In some ways, Saint is Castle's double, refracted through a cracked mirror: a hardworking, highly intelligent man at the top of his field, a man who is devoted to his family. When his son Bobby is killed while making an arms smuggling deal, Saint is willing to risk everything to avenge that death.

In fleshing out Saint's character, Hensleigh drew upon extensive research into criminals and their psychology. "Howard Saint believes that his revenge is righteous," the filmmaker comments. "But like a lot of syndicate players, Howard Saint is disassociated from morality and disassociated from the world that the rest of us live in. He believes he's above the law, and he disregards the fact that his son was killed by law enforcement agents while in the process of breaking the law." Saint also disregards the fact that his own criminal disposition provided an example for his ill-fated son.

Avi Arad sees Howard Saint as a villain who fits squarely in the Marvel tradition. "At Marvel, we want our villains to have a human dimension. To understand a villain you have to see the man behind the villain, the person that comes home at the end of the day," he reflects. "Howard Saint has a life that he loves, a wife he adores, kids that are the apples of his eye. But in the back of his mind he knows that he's in a business that has a downside. He lives a life of paranoia."

That paranoia plays a large role in Castle's plan for retribution, which is shaped by his knowledge of the Saint family's personal dynamics as well as their illegal enterprises. Castle's strategy is to undermine Howard Saint's confidence in his greatest treasure - his family, which includes his best friend and lawyer Quentin Glass. "This is the sort of perverse aspect to Castle. He could simply execute Howard Saint on the golf course, for instance, but he chooses not to. It's not enough," says Hensleigh. "Castle can't yet articulate it, but his philosophy has begun to take shape. As he says later, it's not about revenge, which is an emotional response; it's about punishment. If he could articulate it, I think he'd say that certain crimes rise to a level of unconscionability or egregiousness that they fall into the category of those that require proportionate punishment."

Hensleigh enlarged the roles of Castle's tenement neighbors, Joan, Dave and Mr. Bumpo, who appeared in the Welcome Back Frank series. The trio becomes Castle's one connection to human community, humor and warmth, and they ultimately allow him to see beyond the scope of his pain. "They're all broken people. Castle is a broken man. He heals them; they heal him," Hensleigh allows. "Through the softening and humanizing effects of this new surrogate family, and the fact that he had to come to their aid - because these are people that he cares about - he realizes that he has a broader role after the vengeance of his family is concluded."

The Cast
In the tradition of iconic loners, The Punisher is a man of few words. In casting the lead role, Hensleigh sought an actor who could not only embody the character's physical power, but also who could convey meaningful emotion without words. He honed in on Tom Jane, who had acted in films as diverse as 61*, Deep Blue Sea and Boogie Nights.

"Tom Jane was always very much on my radar," Hensleigh comments. "I wanted an actor who was willing to be somewhat spartan in his performance, and I was incredibly impressed with Tom's performance in 61*. I thought he had an everyman quality. He had good looks, but not the sort of GQ-model look; he had a more rugged, experienced look. He struck me as what I refer to as a 'pure' actor - the performance naturally flows from him. He doesn't have to exert a great deal. While being very still before the camera, he can convey a great deal of emotion."

As it happened, Jane has been an avid comic book reader since childhood. He had read the Punisher as a youth and greatly admired the recent comics by Ennis and Dillon. "To get the chance to bring Frank Castle onto the big screen was incredibly exciting," the actor says. "Here is this unique character that has this specialized set of skills and he lives his life totally beholden to a set of ideals. Frank dedicated his life to upholding a system of justice that he believed in. And everything that he lived his life supporting and idealizing crumbles as fate completely lets him down. Frank is filled with rage and incomprehensible pain. There's absolutely nothing in his life that's been unsullied by this experience."

Hensleigh recalls that he and Jane shared the same vision for the character from their first meeting. "Tom and I decided to play a great deal of the character's emotion silently, or with very little dialogue. Most of the pictures that we loved from our youth were anti-hero pictures with stars like Clint Eastwood, Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson. They're not verbal roles. Those stars consistently played men who were so broken-down that they were unable to articulate what was really going on with them emotionally."

All agreed that Jane had the ability to forge the necessary emotional connection with the audience. As Ari Arad puts it, "Tom is a remarkable actor. There's something very soulful about him. You feel Castle's pain, and you understand what he's going through."

With Jane poised to become a formidable Punisher, an equally formidable actor was needed for the role of Howard Saint. The filmmakers approached superstar John Travolta and were thrilled when he responded positively. Says Hurd, "With just a look, a glance, two or three words, John Travolta can deliver the power of his character's position. I think that John Travolta and Tom Jane are the perfect hero and villain combination."

Travolta describes the film as a departure from the comic book norm. "It offered a very different type of Marvel hero who's not superhuman. It was very strongly based in reality, rather than fantasy or science fiction, and I found that refreshing," Travolta comments.

An exceptional roster of actors and actresses were cast in supporting roles.

Samantha Mathis (Little Women) portrays Castle's down-to-earth wife, Maria. Oscar-nominated actor Roy Scheider, who starred in such classic 70s films as The French Connection, Klute and Marathon Man, was approached to play Castle's father, Frank Sr. Scheider was impressed by the story's realistic tone. "To me, the action was very believable," he says. "It wasn't a film about CGI special effects. Jonathan was clearly writing a story about a human being."

Hensleigh was pleased with how Jane, Mathis and Scheider meshed in their roles as family members. As the filmmaker notes, "Seeing Castle as a family man is absolutely critical to understanding who he is."

After Castle's family is killed, his sole relationships are with his fellow tenement dwellers: Joan, Mr. Bumpo and Dave. In casting the roles, Hensleigh sought out actors who could capture the singular camaraderie that unites three people essentially forgotten by society - and who become a surrogate family for their taciturn new neighbor. He turned to Marvel favorite Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, having been impressed by her work in the Marvel films X-Men and X2, as well as Brian De Palma's Femme Fatale. Joan, who had been timid and dowdy in the comic book, acquired a new dimension as played by Romijn-Stamos. "There's never really a sexual overtone in the comic book, but you can't do that with Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, for God's sake," Hensleigh points out. "No one's ever going to believe it." Comedian John Pinette took on the role of Mr. Bumpo, while young actor Ben Foster joined the cast as Dave.

With Travolta on board as Howard Saint, attention turned to the role of his adored wife, Livia. Hensleigh drew Livia as a female version of her ruthless husband, a beauty who was eager to escape the tough Cuban neighborhood where she grew up. The Saints have maintained their ardor even as their children have become adults. Says Hensleigh, "Their relationship has not in any way fallen into the rut that marriages of this length sometimes fall into. They are still very much impassioned."

Laura Harring, who played the amnesiac starlet in David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, portrays Livia Saint. She describes Livia as an atypical femme fatale. "A classic femme fatale is somewhat disconnected from her heart. But Livia has a heart, and it belongs to her family. When her son is killed, she becomes lethal."

Completing the extended Saint clan are Will Patton as Howard Saint's lawyer and best friend Quentin Glass, and Eddie Jemison as the unlucky flunky Micky Duka. James Carpinello portrays both Bobby and John Saint. Hensleigh had cast Carpinello as John Saint but was having difficulty finding an actor to portray his doomed sibling. Meanwhile, the filmmaker met with Carpinello once again. As the filmmaker remembers, "I was driving home from the meeting with James and I said, 'I'm going to cast James as both.' And that was it."

Two of Castle's adversaries, The Russian and Harry Heck, were also adapted from the Welcome Back Frank series. Fans of the comic will be delighted to see the Russian brought to bone-crushing life by professional wrestler Kevin Nash. While The Russian played a sizable role in the comic, Harry Heck appeared in just three frames. But Hensleigh liked the character's name and decided to create a new persona for him, transforming Harry into a musical assassin from Memphis. He is played in the film by country singer and actor Mark Collie, whom Hensleigh has known for several years. "He's a great singer, very talented. He did a short film in which he played Johnny Cash, which I liked very much. I started to craft the role and realized it would be perfect for Mark."

An Old-School Approach
In style, tone and technique, The Punisher evokes the taut, vigorous action storytelling that thrived in the 1960's and 70s. Says Hensleigh, "I greatly admire the tradition of action filmmaking laid down by Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood, Sam Peckinpah and, in particular, Don Siegel. I love the spareness of those films. I love the classic camerawork, and the fact that it's based solely on storytelling."

Hensleigh and the film's producers put together a crew of key collaborators who thoroughly understood that aesthetic, beginning with director of photography Conrad W. Hall. The film marks the second feature credit for Hall, who had previously shot Panic Room for David Fincher. "Jonathan wanted to do a film in a more classic visual style, with an unobtrusive camera and dramatic lighting that would enhance the tension of a scene. That was exciting to me, because it's easy to fall into the trap of trying to outdo whatever the fashion of the moment is," comments Hall. Hall acquired an appreciation of the storyteller's art from his father, the late, much-admired cinematographer Conrad L. Hall. "My father was a great filmmaker, and he was really about pointing the camera at the story."

During pre-production, Hensleigh and Hall looked at dozens of action films, crime sagas and westerns made between 1960 and 1978, including the Dirty Harry series, The Getaway, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The Godfather and Bonnie and Clyde. Those films helped establish the cinematic vocabulary Hensleigh and Hall developed for The Punisher. "We wanted to situate The Punisher as a larger-than-life character," explains Hall. "Without copying these films, they gave us a common ground from which to communicate."

Hensleigh and Hall chose to keep the cinematography of The Punisher as naturalistic as possible, which suited both the muscularity of the story and the realistic style of the comic. They largely avoided pre-determined color palettes; occasionally Hall introduced blue tones to underscore emotional themes. "Jonathan really felt that we should deal with color as the locations and nature dictated," Hall explains. "Ultimately, we fell upon a style that we felt was original for The Punisher. The idea behind this picture was that it ought to be bleak -this is a dark story - but beautiful."

The film's flinty realism is enhanced by a strong undercurrent of dark humor. Frank Castle may be a man of few words, but he does have a way with a wry quip. "The story at its heart is a very emotional tale of incredible loss," Jane reflects. "The challenge was to keep the tone relatively close to the bone, and yet find the humor in the situations. It was important that we mixed a sense of fun in with the horror. The movie is intended to entertain people. We all need to be able to laugh. We need that emotional release."

From the outset, Hensleigh was determined that the film's action sequences would be the province of actors and stunt people. Every chase, fight and shootout had to exist within the boundaries of human possibility. "I like practical gags, gags that can be pulled off by stunt people without CGI enhancement," he says. "I spent a great deal of time going back over my old notes about all the things I've wanted to do. I didn't want to write some massive stunt that would run contrary to the laws of physics."

Comments Hurd, "We have a character without super powers, and without super powers you need to be able to use conventional techniques in order to conquer your enemies. As filmmakers, we embraced that same philosophy. We wanted to use conventional techniques. There's no moment in this film where you'll sit back and say, 'Oh, well, that's a CGI shot. Isn't that an amazing CGI shot?' Instead you will absolutely believe in what you see."

In fact, there is good reason to believe what you see - Tom Jane performs 90% of his own stunts in the film. "Tom wanted to fully portray his role in the film, and that extended to performing almost all of his own stunts. Generally, as a producer, it's the last thing you want to hear," Hurd acknowledges. "As a moviegoer, on the other hand, it gives the film incredible authenticity, because even in the stunts you're seeing the man who has created the character of Frank Castle."

In order to do that, Jane not only had to get in peak physical shape - he had to learn everything the Punisher would conceivably know about fighting.

Preparing the Punisher for Action
With production scheduled to begin in August 2003, Jane embarked on an intensive eight-week training program in May 2003. The program encompassed true-to-life military training along with physical fitness training and diet, and was designed by Harry Humphries, a former Navy Seal who is the founder of Global Studies Group, Inc. (GSGI). A consulting/training/security company comprised of current and former military, special operatives and law enforcement personnel, GSGI began working in motion picture production with the Hensleigh-scripted action hit The Rock.

Jane's military and weapons training was designed to replicate the training Castle would have received as a Marine who rose to become a Special Operator with a counter-terrorism emphasis. Says Technical Advisor Mike Mello of GSGI, "As a Special Operator, his training is much more advanced, much more specialized than your average individual. He's going to know counter-guerrilla tactics and psychological tactics; he's going to have special weapons training. We teach the same things that get taught in the real world, because that's our frame of reference. Everything that Tom was taught is real, live stuff that is used today."

GSGI's Kirk Campbell, a former Navy SEAL, oversaw Jane's firearms training. Jane's instruction began with the Colt 1911, the standard law enforcement handgun. The Colt was followed by shoulder-fired weapons such as the M-16 and the M-16's cut-down version, the M-4, used by tactical teams throughout the world. The final category of firearms was comprised of grenade launchers.

Mike Mello trained Jane in tactics and combatives, which encompassed unarmed combat and what are known as "edge weapons." The unarmed combat section included work on kickboxing, with different strategies from Israel, Japan, the Philippines and Brazil. The "edge weapons" emphasized a wide variety of knives, including such exotic blades as the karambit from Southeast Asia and the "Balisong," also known as the "butterfly knife." Jane was taught how to properly hold each knife, how to set up angles for cuts, how to strategize. Explains Mello, "We really focused a lot on 'edge weapons' because Tom's character, Frank, plays with a lot of knives. We started out with a very base level and worked him up into some rather advanced, complex patterns. Since we had a very short period of time to take this individual and get him looking extremely proficient, we had to rush him. Tom was getting material that, on an average, some people wouldn't be getting until a year down the road."

Meanwhile, Jane was also following a rigorous fitness and diet regimen, created for him and overseen by fitness trainer John MacLaren. The program was designed to give Jane the strength, agility, energy and stamina to meet the demanding challenges of The Punisher. "The focus was to get Tom lean and powerful and more muscular, but also to make him very mobile, very athletic, which was necessary for all the combat scenes," says MacLaren. "I like to use the example of a panther, because it's an animal that doesn't waste a lot of energy; yet it's very quick and has a tremendous amount of power. It has precision, elegance, and tremendous economy of motion."

MacLaren started Jane on a cardiovascular workout of 45 minutes, three to four times a week, using an elliptical trainer. Later in the training, the cardio workout was ramped up to one-to-two hour sessions, five or six days a week. Jane lifted weights four days a week, alternating between power-lifting routines and bodybuilding routines, which would focus on isolated muscle groups. A typical weight session would last 90 minutes, and was sometimes performed twice in the same day, a strategy that sped results.

Jane's diet changed frequently over the course of training to achieve the target body fat number of 8%. After starting on a restricted diet that allowed him to lose weight constantly, he was switched to a zero-carbohydrate diet, known as "Opus One," for four weeks. During the five or six days a week that Jane followed "Opus One," he was allowed nothing but lean proteins and fat. As Jane's schedule got busier as the start of production neared, he was switched to a primarily liquid diet. He maintained that diet for much of the film's production, eating one solid meal a day, and eating more regularly on weekends or off days. "He had an incredibly intense drive to maintain this diet," MacLaren reports. "He got more and more lean every week of the shoot, which never happens."

Mello gives Jane the highest possible marks. "I've worked with a lot of people for the past eight years within this industry and all of them are very hard workers. And nobody has worked as hard on a role, and has put so much passion into a role, as Tom Jane. He created this. We pointed him in the right direction, but he was the still the one that had to take the walk. And he really did. It's commendable."

Filming/Locations/ Costumes/Stunts
Production on The Punisher began in August 2003 in Tampa, Florida. Most of the film was shot in Tampa itself; the Puerto Rico sequences were filmed on Honeymoon Island, a state park located in Clearwater, Florida. To create the sets, Hensleigh sought out production designer Michael Hanan, who worked extensively with the late John Frankenheimer. "This film required a logician, and someone who was good at designing anything - bleak urban environments, a classy nightclub, a really swank office or a suburban home," the filmmaker explains. "And Michael Hanan had the chops to do all of that. He's brilliant."

Hanan created the glossy Saints and Sinners nightclub inside a Tampa bank, and he transformed Honeymoon Island's public restrooms into the homey buildings of the Castle family compound. Hanan also designed the tenement apartment building that becomes Castle's home; the set was constructed as it appears in the film, with apartments built off a central hallway.

Though the Punisher does not have a costume per se, he does wear one of the most iconic of all Marvel garments: a T-shirt emblazoned with a skull. The filmmakers entrusted the creation of the T-shirt to costume designer Lisa Tomczeszyn, who had previously worked on the Marvel comic book films Spider-Man and Daredevil. "Lisa understood what we were doing with The Punisher T-shirt. It's a bit heightened in design; it comes from the comic book and you've got to capture that just right," says Hensleigh. "But Lisa also has a perfect classical sense of wardrobe as well, and that was important because all the additional characters had to be dead real."

Hensleigh tapped veteran stunt coordinator and second unit director Gary Hymes to handle the action choreography. Hymes took full advantage of Hanan's tenement set when it came time to choreograph one the film's wildest sequences, the fight between Castle and the gargantuan assassin called The Russian. Taking the fight from room to room and apartment to hallway, Hymes incorporated some of Castle's armaments and tools, including an engine hoist. Recalls Hensleigh, "Gary started adding things to the Russian fight sequence and it just got better and better."

The sequence is at once terrifying and hilarious, a dance of brute force choreographed to the strains of Puccini's "La Donna è mobile" from "Rigoletto," which is playing in Mr. Bumpo's apartment. Hensleigh believed humor would only increase the scene's suspense. "I wanted to evoke the tone of the fights in the old James Bond movies. I wanted to try to replicate not just the fury, not just the violence, but also the deftness," the filmmaker explains. "A lot of fight sequences try to be so grave and so tough. My reminiscence of the Bond films was that they didn't try to be so grave and so tough, and yet they conveyed a great deal more violence. I think by being a little bit lighter, you increase the jeopardy."

During that fight, Castle is thrown through the wall by the Russian and crashes into the tenement's empty hallway. Amazingly, the stunt was performed by Jane himself - something stunt coordinator Hymes would not have allowed under most circumstances. "In my 27 years in this business, I can literally count on one hand the actors I've worked with who have not been eager to do the stunt work, but who very conscientiously followed directions," he comments. "Tom had spent a lot of time preparing for this role, both physically and mentally, and was in great condition. Also, he's an excellent athlete, so he was able to do 90% of his stunts, which is tremendous."

Still, Hymes admits he was stunned when Jane came bursting through the wall. "I've never seen anyone go through a wall like that. There were a few anxious moments, looking in the monitor. But Thomas has outstanding reflexes and natural instincts, and did a great job of protecting himself. I was very relieved to see that he was okay, that he'd been acting."

The Punisher was shot in 52 days, an unusually brisk pace for a film with a number of action sequences. Having been on set for many of his films, including Armageddon, The Rock and Con Air, Hensleigh came to his feature directorial debut with a good deal of prior experience. In Hurd's estimation, "Jonathan's perspective as a writer has always been a director's perspective. He sees everything from not only the actor's perspective but from a visual perspective, and that's a very uncommon combination -- and it's essential to the best filmmaking in the genre."

Jane agrees, adding, "Jonathan is a great collaborator and he allowed me to bring something that's uniquely mine to the part. He's a storyteller, and his goal is to tell the story in the best way possible."

Working with Hensleigh to cut that story together was editor Steven Kemper, whose credits include Mission Impossible II and Face/Off. Hensleigh knew Kemper had the ability to keep the action moving, but the editor revealed a deep affinity for drama in the film's quieter moments. "Steven's known for his action sequences, but in fact he's wonderful with dialogue and emotional scenes," Hensleigh affirms. "He did a fantastic job."

Closing Thoughts
With this latest Marvel hero poised to become a big screen star, Avi Arad feels confident that fans of the comic book will be happy with The Punisher. Says the producer, "The most important thing is to stay true to the character. Jonathan Hensleigh not only embraced the book, he enhanced it. This was a unique opportunity for us to do something realistic, gritty, hard. We think The Punisher nails it."

Frank Castle is no longer the vigilante of 1974; The Punisher speaks to the anxieties of a different era. "I think he's a character of the times we live in. I think that questions of justice and the morality of acts of revenge or retribution are certainly on people's minds these days," Hensleigh reflects. "As a filmmaker, I personally don't take a stand one way or another. But I was very watchful towards setting rules for the character, which the comic book does a good job of doing. If a person seeks a life of vengeance, if you will, on behalf of society, then he'd better have some hard, fast rules. Castle's are that he will only go after those individuals who he absolutely knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt -- or who society has judged, beyond a shadow of a doubt - have committed heinous acts. He's not wanton in his vengeance."

Jane takes up the theme. "What Frank Castle discovers is that people can rise above their own individual wants and needs and strive for a higher purpose. You can make a difference by dedicating yourself, utterly, to what you believe is right, without expecting any reward. I think that's where Frank comes to, and I think that's what makes him 'The Punisher.'"