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.”
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