18 • 107 mins • 6 February

Director: Lexi Alexander

Cast: Ray Stevenson, Dominic West, Julie Benz, Colin Salmon, Doug Hutchison

Rating:

As his recent Punisher: War Zone mini-series demonstrated, Garth Ennis didn’t just bring a gritty sense of realism to Marvel’s best known anti-hero but also an anarchic sense of humour - something that is glaringly absent from Lexi Alexander’s gratuitously violent movie.

The German director, who previously turned West Ham football hooligans into cartoon caricatures in Green Street, borrows several scenarios and supporting characters from the Irishman’s definitive five-year run most notably feckless one-man Punisher task force Detective Soap, but none of the comic’s pathos and wit.

The script pits the skull-chested assassin against the Two Face-esque Jigsaw, who’s about as close as the Punisher comes to having an arch-nemesis. Alexander attempts to ratchets up the tension by having Castle question his mission after he inadvertently kills an undercover FBI agent, an act which sets him on a collision course with the fed’s hard-arsed partner Paul Budiansky (Colin Salmon). At the encouragement of gadget master Microchip (a wasted Wayne Knight), he returns to protect the late agent’s wife and daughter from the vengeful Jigsaw and his sadistic kid brother Loony Bin Jim (an over-the-top Doug Hutchison).

In the lead role, Rome’s Ray Stevenson has none of the muscular presence of Thomas Jane, who took on the role in 2004’s The Punisher or indeed Dolph Lundgren, who starred in the 1989 film. He gives a charmless, monosyllabic performance and doesn’t even utter a word for the first half-hour. As Jigsaw, Dominic West’s hammy turn is a far cry from his distinguished work on The Wire as he and his fellow goons assume exaggerated Italian accents that make them seem like cast-offs from a bad Sopranos parody. However, that’s nothing compared to the ridiculous brogue adopted by Irish-black hoodlum McGinty (TJ Storm) and his parkour street gang - although the spectacular demise of one of them provides a rare genuinely amusing moment.

Unlike more high-powered Marvel heroes like Spider-Man and X-Men, The Punisher has never enjoyed much box office success and this excruciatingly terrible film certainly won’t change that.

Stephen Jewell