Colin Salmon, left, and Ray Stevenson, of the HBO series Rome, co-star in Punisher: War Zone.

Jonathan Wenk

After spending a couple of hours with the Marvel Comics revenge-minded anti-hero in Punisher: War Zone you may feel as though you’ve been pummeled.

The film, a sort of cross between a graphic comic book and a violent video game, is an unrelenting bloodbath. Heads are lopped off with swords or blasted off by guns. Axes are embedded into foreheads. In the film’s most imaginative and squeamishly icky moment, a Mob boss is hurled into a stew of bottles inside a recycling center’s bottle crusher, something which is followed by a lot of blood and a lot of blood-curdling screams.

Four years after Marvel’s The Punisher came to movies with Thomas Jane in the title role (and a cast that included John Travolta as the villain), this sequel has more bloodletting and a new Punisher — Irish-born actor Ray Stevenson. Some fans of the comic book series had carped that Jane was not as strong or as menacing as they had pictured their favorite anti-hero. His replacement, Stevenson, has a steely wherewithal, but no apparent personality. Stevenson, who played Titus in 22 episodes of HBO’s Rome, might be the most uncharismatic hero the screen has ever seen.

The Punisher is a vigilante who dresses in a bullet-proof vest with a big white skull on the chest. He is bent on destroying the Mob that killed his wife and children after they witnessed a Mob execution. At the start of Punisher: War Zone, he invades a Mob dinner party at a mansion, decimating everyone at the table, which is easy because all the diners seem to be sitting around waiting for him to get around to them in turn.

With everyone dead, it leaves Billy Russoti (Dominic West) as the new Godfather. Russoti, who runs a recycling plant, has plans to steal a dan- gerous biological weapon from a cargo ship and so The Pun- isher sets his sights on him.

In one of the film’s many violent exchanges, The Punisher kills one of Russoti’s men, who turns out to be an FBI informant. This later leads to a lot of guilt and soul-searching on the part of The Punisher. During the raid, he also sends Russoti into that glass crusher, which leaves the narcissistic criminal with a face that looks like something Dr. Frankenstein cooked up. His stitched-up face has bloody sores and a drooping eye. Now calling himself Jigsaw (not to be confused with the character in the five Saw movies), Russoti sets his sights on killing The Punisher, kidnapping the FBI informant’s wife and little daughter to use as bait.

To help him, Russoti springs his brother, known as Loony Bin Jim (Doug Hutchinson), from the mental institution where he has been locked up and tied down. Russoti later recruits an army of nasty-looking thugs to become his army in his war against The Punisher.

What follows is a long series of violent encounters as The Punisher leaves his subway tunnel lair to pick off Russoti’s cutthroat army. All the principal characters have short fuses and are quick to anger and react, cutting down whoever dares get in their way.

Director Lexi Alexander, a former female World Karate Kickboxing Champion who stayed in the United States on one of her tours in hopes of becoming a filmmaker, carries out the bloody encounters with a directness and occasional wit. At one point Loony Bin Jim blasts the heads off the dolls in a little girl’s bedroom. But the fun of this slaughter-fest lessens the longer the film goes on as the bodies pile up and the attacks begin to look increasingly similar and predictable, all leading up to the inevitable showdown between The Punisher and Jigsaw.

That Stevenson is so distant that he doesn’t pull one into the film and on his side, is a major flaw. The Punisher: War Zone has all the violence of a video game but without the personal participation or the emotional investment. That most of the characters look like comic book figures doesn’t help make it any more involving. The film was written by Nick Santora and Art Marcum, who had written the screenplay for the hit Iron Man and was probably brought in to jazz up the plot and give it some wit. Good for him that he still has Iron Man under his belt for 2008. The Punisher: War Zone is destined to lie in the dust. The Punisher: War Zone

mjanuson@projo.com