Punisher: War Zone

The Marvel comics ex-cop vigilante (Ray Stevenson) unwittingly kills an undercover FBI agent while mowing down his usual quota of gangsters. Contrite, he takes it on himself to protect the man’s widow (Julie Benz) and daughter from the gangster (Dominic West) the agent was working against. Despite the presence of three writers (Nick Santora, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway), the title pretty much tells you all there is to know, and under Lexi Alexander’s anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-tougher direction, the movie establishes a new definition for the term “mindless violence.” Dominic West sports a preposterous dem-deez-doze accent that’s as phony as the locations (Montreal clumsily subbing for the Big Apple), while Stevenson bears up manfully under what must have seemed an awful comedown after HBO’s Rome.