The Punisher 2: War Zone - You might like this... you might

This is the third time Marvel's `The Punisher' has been brought to the big screen and it's the third time it's been met with rather mixed reactions. It's fair to say that, despite being an awesome comic, The Punisher is a hard character to sell. This is largely because all the other Marvel superheroes (think Spiderman, The X-Men and The Avengers) are all `family friendly' and can be watched by everyone. However, The Punisher simply kills people and he kills them pretty badly. Therefore, anything less than a brutal, grisly affair will have the fans of the comics howling, yet this limits the film's audience.

The Punishers is about an FBI agent, whose family is slain by criminals. So he fakes his own death and returns to reek vengeance on the guilty. It's a pretty simple affair. After Dolph Lundgren was first cast as The Punisher in the eighties, it was subsequently rebooted and brought up to date a few years ago, starring Thomas Jane as the titular character. Therefore, fans were surprised when it was rebooted yet again, only with less well-known faces and less of a budget.

It also doesn't feel much like your typical Marvel superhero film. The action is pretty simplistic, but nicely done nonetheless. It's certainly not an A-list movie, but then it's a damn sight more stylish and better produced than the hordes of B-movies out there. Ray Stevenson gives his best shot at bringing a new level of darkness to the brutal vigilante (many felt that Thomas Jane was simply too `pretty' to be so gritty and dark) and the villains here are nicely comic book in their over-the-topness.

If you're not that familiar (or bothered) by how close this is to the source material, look at it as a straight action film. There's plenty of action and shoot-outs to keep people happy. Die-hard fans will always have their objections, but, if you're not expecting too much, it'll keep you entertained in a dark kind of way for an hour and a half.

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that