Punisher: War Zone may be one of very few action movies directed by a woman (Lexi Alexander), but that does not mean it is without its fair share of blood, guts, and guns. Based on a series of graphic novels, the Punisher films tell the story of Frank Castle aka The Punisher (Ray Stevenson), the former special forces and FBI agent whose entire family was killed by crime boss Bobby Saint, and who has since taken it upon himself to punish the entire organized crime underworld. In the first film, Castle managed to get his hands on Saint and his cronies, and as this second film begins five years later, his "punishment" of the criminal underworld continues.

Punishment has becomes Castle's purpose. Justice: his mission. That is until his bust-up of a prominent mob boss's get-out-of-jail-free party ends in the death of an undercover FBI agent. Tortured by his murder of an "innocent," as well as the risk at which he has put Agent Donatelli's widow (Julie Benz) and young daughter (Stephanie Janusauskas), Castle tells his "assistant" Micro (Wayne Knight) that he is going to quit. Of course, getting out of the hero game is never that easy. And so begins Castle's fight to protect Donatelli's widow and child as he continues to struggle with exactly what it is he does.

Because Castle is The Punisher, central to his story are the concepts of punishment and justice. When it comes to Castle's brand of punishment, he has no mercy. He is out to get anyone and everyone who has ever committed a wrong. And when he gets them, he doesn't just slap them on the wrist and lock them up for a few years; he kills them, dead. Believe me, with the amount of blood, guts, and brains that splatter across the screen every time he exacts his punishment on another criminal, except for the movie's villain Jigsaw (Dominic West), no one Castle meets survives.

Of course, not everyone is on board with Castle's way of doing things. Although certain members of law enforcement help him, others see him as just as much a criminal as those he kills. "Who punishes you?" Angela Donatelli asks. "For in the same way that you judge others, so will you be judged," a preacher and old-friend from seminary warns him. And setting up an alternative under which Castle's way of doing things faces judgment itself is God's way of doing things as illustrated in a funeral reading from Psalms 103:8:

The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.

As in many hero or superhero movies, Punisher: War Zone deals with the idea that a hero must fill in for a failure of the government to either protect the people or punish criminals. But what is interesting about Punisher is that it takes the concept one step further and goes head-to-head with God. Not only do Castle's actions challenge God's supreme authority to judge and punish, in essence the film proposes that God either does not exist at all or has become ineffectual and irrelevant to the world as it is today.

When Jigsaw holds Angela Donatelli and her daughter Grace captive in an attempt to find his missing money, Angela says, "We don't have it; I swear to God." To which Jigsaw looks to Grace and says, "What about you? Would you also like to swear to your imaginary friend?"

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