After audiences thumbed their noses at the two previous attempts to bring Marvel’s trigger-happy vigilante to the big screen, you’d think that someone would have got the message. Yet here we are again, with Ray Stevenson replacing Thomas Jane (who replaced Dolph Lundgren) as Frank Castle for this stupendously violent ’80s throwback.
German director and former stuntwoman Lexi Alexander knows her way around a set-piece, but the performances are largely awful, the tone is inconsistent and the orgy of above-the-law, right-wing violence is celebrated rather than damned. Three strikes and out for Mr. Castle.
