Improved ‘Punisher’ is on the warpath

“Punisher: War Zone,” the gory follow-up to 2004’s “Punisher” based on the Marvel comic book series, hangs around the same neighborhood as “The Dark Knight.” Both feature vigilantes who go too far. Both crime-fighters speak in an affected, tough-guy whisper, when they talk at all. Both favor the black vigilante threads when they’re out on the town, taking out the trash.

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

This time Ray Stevenson, who was Titus Pullo in the HBO series “Rome,” plays Castle.

While he doesn’t say much in between workaday tasks -- grinding a man half to death in a glass recycler, or shotgun-blasting a mob goon point-blank in the area formerly known as his head, thanks to the digital wonder of computer-generated effects -- Stevenson brings some gravity to the viscera.

In “Punisher: War Zone,” Castle’s adversary is the recycling victim, the mob capo Jigsaw, with a horribly stitched-up face. He’s played with peppy relish by Dominic West. The relationship between Jigsaw and his brother, “Loony Bin Jim” (Doug Hutchison), is one of genuine affection and mutual admiration. So much blood on the walls, so many corpses, yet such familial warmth at the center of it all.

With her background in kickboxing, it’s disappointing that director Lexi Alexander (the woman who made “Green Street Hooligans”) couldn’t handle the nondigitized fight sequences with more dash.

As with most of the these hard-R comic book movies, all roads lead to the first-person gamer perspectives, wherein the protagonist makes his way down a hallway and in and out of various rooms, slaughtering anonymous villain after anonymous villain.

“Punisher: War Zone” is set in New York City, but you’ve rarely seen the city played with less conviction; the movie was shot mostly in Montreal, with a cameo by Vancouver.

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‘Punisher: War Zone’

MPAA rating: R for pervasive strong brutal violence, language and some drug use.

Running time: 1 hour, 47 minutes

Playing: In general release