Review: Punisher: War Zone (1/5)

Punisher: War Zone
(Lexi Alexander):
Ray Stevenson, Dominic West, Julie Benz, Doug Hutchinson, Colin Salmon
Running time: 107 minutes (18)


This is the story of a big angry man called Punisher (Ray Stevenson). He used to be a cop but the mafia killed his family. Now he lives in an underground bunker with lots of guns. He likes to point them in the faces of mafia mugs. His aim in life is to catch Jigsaw (The Wire’s Dominic West) who thinks he’s the Joker.
The Punisher started life as a Marvel comics vigilante. He dresses like an SAS man. Heck, he’s a one-man commando unit. He dangles from a chandelier, spins 360 degrees, and guns down an entire room of bad guys. He fixes his broken nose with a pencil. When finished, I took the pencil, put it in my nose and banged my face off the seat in front of me.
Punisher: War Zone is directed by Lexi Alexander, who, incidentally, is a woman. She seems to be angry with men. So many men’s heads are pulped, popped, perforated, powderised and pulverized in the first five minutes, you wonder how she can take the shock factor any further. Alas, she can’t, unless you are new to watching this kind of moronic, demented dreck.