Aim ... fire ... splatter brains.

All the point-blank carnage of your favourite video game is right there on the big screen in Punisher: War Zone, newest chapter in the adventures of a busy urban vigilante.

In this film, people are shredded by ground glass, impaled on fences, blown up, blown in and blown away -- it's a comedy. Probably.

Frank Castle is the Punisher (Ray Stevenson), a man who decided to take the law into his own hands after his wife and children were shot dead at a picnic. Mr. Punisher is a former agent, or something like that, so he can kill you very dead, in many creative ways, at 100 paces. He targets mobsters.

When an aged gangster gets away with murder yet again, the Punisher has to visit him at home and shoot up a party, killing almost everyone and inadvertently creating a demonic new enemy for himself. A gangster named Billy 'The Beaut' Russoti (Dominic West) falls into a glass recycling machine and his face is cut to ribbons. Later, his face stitched and patched together in a hideous, twisted mask -- like last year's Louis Vuitton Tribute Patchwork Bag hideous -- Billy has evolved into master criminal "Jigsaw."

He vows to seek revenge against the Punisher. Jigsaw even busts his brother, Loony Bin Jim (Doug Hutchison, hilarious here), out of a psych hospital, so he too can help with the anti-Punisher reign of terror.

The Punisher, meanwhile, is trying to protect a woman and her little daughter from the mob. Jigsaw kidnaps the woman and child, knowing the Punisher will come to their rescue, giving Jigsaw the chance to ambush and kill the Punisher at last. He even puts together an equal opportunity army of gangstas, skinheads and Yakuza to go up against the Punisher.

Can our lone avenging angel take on so many violent bad guys and win? Oh, don't be stupid.

Punisher: War Zone is based on a Marvel comic, which means the gut-spilling, blood-spurting action is so entirely over-the-top audiences laugh and cheer the movie's most disgusting scenes (and there are some doozies).

Various bad guys are chopped up with axes and stabbed with glass and introduced at close quarters to hand grenades; one ne'er-do-well has his head punched in. Literally.

The film boasts some of the more revolting special effects ever conceived. There isn't really any acting to speak of, although Jigsaw and Loony Bin Jim get to chew people and scenery; the dialogue is pretty much what you'd expect.

After Punisher spits out his eye-for-an-eye philosophy to a priest, for example, the priest says, "God be with you, Frank."

Snaps the Punisher, "Sometimes I'd like to get my hands on God!"

Well, Him or the guy who wrote this thing.

(This film is rated 18-A)

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