Metacritic reviews

Dominic West (The Wire) plays a facially mutilated Mob boss as if he's in a broad SNL sketch.

The script isn't what matters here: This is a slasher movie with guns, and, uh, huh-huh, that's pretty cool.

Along with torrents of gore, Punisher: War Zone has moments that are deliriously funny, because the violence is so awful and so casual.

It looks great, it hurtles through its paces and is well-acted. The soundtrack is like elevator music if the elevator were in a death plunge. The special effects are state of the art. Its only flaw is that it's disgusting.

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

The blood and gore quotients of Punisher: War Zone are extremely high and are sure to sop the appetites of the series' fans and virtual bloodlusters.

So unrelentingly violent that all but teen boys might as well stay home.

This is junk, a bunch of hard-R action scenes kept together by the thinnest of plots.

There is no stylistic thrill to this blunt object of a callous action film. It's content to bludgeon the audience into numb resignation.

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."