| Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 17, 2011

| Original Score: D- | May 6, 2011

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.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Feb 6, 2009

As its absurdly macho title hints, this action film is on a mission: not to delight or beguile so much as to club you over the head.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 6, 2009

Another violently unsuccessful attempt to bring this comic book character to screen.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 5, 2009

'Oh God, now I've got brains spattered all over me,' exclaims The Punisher's slippery inside man, Detective Soap. You may feel the same at the end of this messy, sadistic reboot of the Marvel comic-book series.

| Original Score: 2/6 | Feb 5, 2009

Castle/the Punisher is not the most charismatic comic book hero at the best of times but Stevenson's jowly pallor and oil slick of hair makes him look more like an Eastern European abattoir worker than a vigilante to be reckoned with.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 5, 2009

If a picture were to win awards for how magnificently it impaled a dreadlocked convenience store robber or spectacularly it beheaded indignant elderly mob bosses then Punisher: War Zone would make a clean sweep of the evening.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Dec 10, 2008

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

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Dec 5, 2008

The ultraviolent third stab at Marvel's homicidal vigilante is the best and closest to the source material.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 5, 2008

Assuming you can appreciate the high level of gore and assorted sadistic weirdness, the action is satisfying and the dark story is close to the tone of its Marvel Comics source material.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 5, 2008

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Dec 5, 2008

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.

| Dec 5, 2008

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

| Original Score: C+ | Dec 5, 2008

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

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Dec 5, 2008

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.

| Original Score: D | Dec 5, 2008

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

| Dec 5, 2008

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.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Dec 5, 2008

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.

| Dec 4, 2008

It's a joyless plunge into gunfire that doesn't even know how to draw blood.

Full Review | Original Score: D | Dec 4, 2008