Punisher: War Zone

THE THIRD attempt to make something cinematic from the adventures of Marvel Comics’ least empathetic, most emotionally frigid vigilante is among the most gratuitously violent popcorn movies ever made.

Every time a bullet passes within the same zip code as a wrongdoer, at least half a pound of flesh is torn from the villain’s head and several bucket-loads of grey matter distribute themselves about the scenery. Early on in the film, Frank Castle, the boxy hero, cuts himself shaving and four metres of intestine splatter out of the wound and onto the shaving mirror.

I may have misremembered that last bit, but Punisher: War Zoneis certainly unrelenting in its efforts to show us the bowels, brains and bone marrow of its unhappy characters.

Aside from that however, the film has little going for it. The rough-looking Ray Stevenson, who takes over from Dolph Lundgren and Thomas Jane as the murderous anti-hero, was born in Lisburn, and he plays the Punisher as if he were the bouncer at a rustic drinking den in Belfast’s Sandy Row. “What did I tell you about not wearing trainers?” he doesn’t quite say. “Watch while I punch you so hard that clusters of wadded colon spurt out of your eyeballs.”

Still, whatever else you'd say about Mr Stevenson – and, if he's reading this anywhere near my house, I'd like to say that he's almost certainly a very nice man– he does make an effort. By way of contrast, Lexi Alexander, perpetrator of Green Street, appears to have directed the film from a deep coma.

Continuity errors abound, boom microphones bounce into view and the dialogue is often barely audible. Still, if Alexander fails to continue her career as a film-maker, she could certainly make a living as an avant-garde butcher. Are there such things?