Punisher: War Zone: Critic Reviews

On the plus side, Punisher: War Zone has one of the all-time great 
 B-movie last lines: 'Oh, God, now I've got brains splattered all over me!'

Does it have to be so witless, so stupid, so openly contemptuous of the very audience ita(TM)s supposed to be pandering to?

You couldn't call it shoddy, exactly, and the actors take it painfully seriously; it's just dispiriting to see all this endeavour in the service of something so humourless and disgusting.

At one point, the Punisher is asked who punishes him. The better question for those who made this inane bloodfest is: Why punish us?

Anyone with a modicum of good sense -- or a weak stomach -- will take it as a warning to stay the heck away from this literally and figuratively deadly War Zone.

If most of the budget has gone to ordnance and blood squibs, director Lexi Alexander films the sprays of gore with an artisan's eye, and the results make effective if morally indefensible movie red meat.

This is the third crack Hollywood has taken at the comic-book hero the Punisher. They say the third time's the charm. But then, they say a lot of things.

You used to be able to depend on a bad film being poorly made. No longer. The Punisher: War Zone is one of the best-made bad movies I've seen.

The film works a bit better than the 2004 Punisher installment, the one starring surly, dislikable Thomas Jane as Frank Castle.

This awful sequel dispenses with any such pretense, its cartoonish characters running an endless gauntlet of hypergruesome violence.

The acting is better than the script deserves and Lexi Alexander's cut-to-the-hearse direction lends the film considerable kick. But there is a steel spike at the end of Punisher's boot that will gouge your eyes out.

This is purely gutter, fanboy, Cheez Whiz cinema, but Alexander delivers the goods.

The movie is simply a lot of noise and energy that inspires no emotional impact, although you may feel like you need to take a shower once the credits roll.

Gore-drenched actioner is guaranteed to draw fans of wretched excess like moths to a nuclear holocaust.

With its dopey fight scenes, grimy look and goopy gore, this movie is so far from ept that inept is the wrong word. It's anti-ept.

Bodily fluids and the sounds they generate are a big part of this gory and wholly unsatisfying slasher film.

Punisher: War Zone is bad enough that it may remind viewers how lucky we have been this year to get two superior superhero movies in Iron Man and The Dark Knight.

If at first you don't succeed, punish, punish again.

The final damning verdict left by the American box office, whom far from raced out to see it, meaning takings of 8m leave Punisher: War Zone the lowest grossing Marvel adaptation to date.

...stands as the best offering out of Hollywood that Punisher fans could've hoped for.

One can assume another reboot will be in the offing after this monstrosity tanks at the box office.

Part '80s action movie, part gross-out horror, this guilty pleasure is Saw meets Rambo . . .