Superhero Media: Dirty Laundry

Knowing that I still had a season of The Punisher on Netflix to get through, I decided to save Dirty Laundry for last on my little Punisher re-watch. Dirty Laundry is a short film, around ten minutes, starring and directed by Thomas Jane; yes, really. When it became clear that Jane wouldn't get to don the iconic skull-shirt again, he decided to make his own follow-up, so much did he enjoy playing the character. If you want to watch Dirty Laundry, and you really should watch it, it's great, it can be found on YouTube, though there are a few different versions and qualities going around, so be careful. There is one really low quality version that's too easy to find with a looping 30-seconds of The Dark Knight soundtrack that really grates. As, essentially, a fan-film, Dirty Laundry is a little cheap-looking and neither the special effects nor actors are always the best, but Thomas Jane and, of all people, Ron Perlman, are there to carry the narrative through.

As the name suggests, the framing of Dirty Laundry is Frank Castle needing to wash some clothes, stopping at a local launderette and getting caught up in gang violence. It's a little iffy that the local gang are all African-American and the heroic characters, Frank and the shop owner, are White, but given the team from whom this story comes (Bootleg Media), I feel that any racist messaging isn't deliberate, though you may vary on that one. Although Frank clearly wants to keep a low-profile and just do his washing, a local gang hassling sex workers and beating and robbing a child eventually force him into action, which he does, not with guns as is typical, but with a bottle of Jack Daniel's and his combat boots. Although brief, the fight is brutal and more intense than most scenes in the Netflix series, making great use of the slow build and just exploding in the climax. It's really well-directed and well worth checking out for how to do a build-up properly, rather than just having Frank sit around making soup.

Yes, I'm very much of the opinion that Thomas Jane should have gotten another shot at playing Frank Castle, and that it's not too late for the MCU to bring him back as an older, The Punisher MAX style version of the character. It's not just that the film Jane was in is one of the best versions of the character, or that he is a big fan of the character and puts his all into his performance, but because he's a fucking good actor who has never got his due. A big Disney/MCU paycheck and a series of films based on the Garth Ennis comics could really cement Jane as a great in the way he deserves, but never seems to get. The MCU has become a great vehicle for actors, directors and just about everyone in the film-making process to get out into the public consciousness and get to deliver on their own passion projects. As much as the homogenisation of popular media under Disney is not a good thing, that it helped launch the careers of Ryan Coogler, Taika Watiki and Tom Holland to new heights is a great boon to the medium.