By George & Josh Bate
After his absence from the latest season of Daredevil: Born Again, Jon Bernthal’s Frank Castle returns for a Marvel Television Special Presentation that offers the deepest and darkest dive into the tormented psyche of The Punisher to date. With more emotional depth than most 10-12 episode television shows and more masterfully choreographed action than most long-running action franchises, The Punisher: One Last Kill delivers the quintessential Frank Castle story.
Directed and co-written by Reinaldo Marcus Green (King Richard, Bob Marley: One Love), The Punisher: One Last Kill picks up sometime after the events of Daredevil: Born Again Season 1. Frank Castle has escaped from Wilson Fisk’s personal prison and now once again lives steeped in the trauma of losing his family years prior. After exacting revenge against the Gnucci crime family for their role in the deaths of his family members, the sole survivor member of the family – Ma Gnucci (Judith Light) – puts out a city-wide bounty on Castle, pitting every low-level criminal in New York against the vigilante known as The Punisher.
Across two seasons of The Punisher on Netflix, one season of Daredevil, and one season of Daredevil: Born Again, Jon Bernthal has taken full advantage of the ample opportunities he’s been afforded to embody Frank Castle and become, to many, the definitive version of the character. Anyone who has watched an interview with Bernthal about Frank Castle will know that the D.C.-native has great reverence for and understanding of the iconic Marvel Comics character, but he has arguably never played the character in a project worthy of his performance. Daredevil Season 2 came closest to this, although the split between The Punisher’s story and The Hand’s arc fostered an incohesive series of television. The two seasons of The Punisher show on Netflix, meanwhile, were marred by bloated, conspiracy-heavy narratives that sluggishly meandered until they met underwhelming conclusions. Daredevil: Born Again Season 1 gave fans a chance to see Bernthal play the role again, but his role in the series meant that he was relegated to the periphery of the overarching narrative and primarily used for action.
The Punisher: One Last Kill is the Frank Castle story that Jon Bernthal and fans deserve and have waited years to experience. Bernthal, who also co-writes the special, has never been better as a character who he has embodied for 10 years. Bernthal wears years of torment and loss on his face so authentically and painfully that it is difficult to not become consumed by the sorrow he languishes in.
The 48-minute special operates firmly as a tale of two halves, the first of which serves as the defining showcase for why Bernthal was born to play Frank Castle and why Frank Castle remains such a captivating character over 50 years since his first appearance. Green and Bernthal exercise restraint in The Punisher: One Last Kill where other filmmakers would not. Rather than dive head first into guns-blazing, fist-crunching action, the duo dedicate half of the special to an intimate examination of Castle’s state-of-mind. The story unfolds solely from Castle’s perspective, which means the audience is subject to the same visions, hallucinations, and gut-wrenching emotions our protagonist is faced with. In doing so, the special positions the audience in the mind of Frank Castle in a way his preceding 40 appearances in the Marvel Cinematic Universe have not. The Punisher: One Last Kill is more than just a one-hour television movie on Disney+ – it’s as thoughtful of a character study as the MCU has ever produced.
Castle’s lingering posttraumatic stress mirrors the chaos of a gritty, crime-infested New York City. While Daredevil: Born Again repeatedly told the audience about the state of the city, The Punisher: One Last Kill actually shows us just how grimy and unruly the city has become. Cinematography from Academy Award winner Robert Elswit (There Will Be Blood, Magnolia) brings the abrasive, contentious streets of NYC to life in gorgeously off-putting and decidedly cinematic fashion. The screenplay, meanwhile, doesn’t shy away from portraying the most deplorable of characters do the most deplorable of things to others. This is a version of the MCU grittier and seedier than any we’ve seen before.
Whereas the first half of the special functions as a psychological character study, the second delivers what every Frank Castle fan also wants from a Punisher story – brutal, unrivaled, no-holds-barred action. The Punisher: One Last Kill blends John Wick: Chapter 2 and The Raid to make a contained, non-stop action film in which everyone is out to get our protagonist and the action is primarily centered in and around an apartment block. Those who recall the prison fight between Frank and Fisk’s men in Daredevil Season 2 or the weight room brawl in The Punisher will recognize that the action in The Punisher: One Last Kill shares a similar ferocity and violence. Whether it be gunfights, hand-to-hand brawls, or a mixture of the two, the special nails every moment of action, having the audience wince at every blow Frank takes and cheer at every blow he lands.
Although the special rounds out in moving fashion, offering a simple yet deserved conclusion to Frank’s emotional arc, The Punisher: One Last Kill hardly resolves its main story and, in turn, feels more like the first episode of a new series than an entirely standalone special. A gripping scene in the first half depicts Frank come face-to-face with Ma Gnucci, a crime lord who has appeared in Punisher comics over the past 26 years. The scene sees Judith Light, known for her roles in Ugly Betty and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, at the top of her game as she reminisces about her fallen family members and lays out her plans to pit the entire city against Frank. Unfortunately, Light only appears once more in the special, briefly showing up as she enters a limo that is briskly driven away. There is no resolution to her pursuit of revenge nor does her promise to have the city of New York go after Frank truly come to fruition, as it seems only the seedy characters populating Frank’s neighborhood go after him.
As the special wraps up, one can’t help but feel as if it is designed to soft-launch a new Punisher series on Disney+. Almost as if it’s a proof of concept before going all-in on a new show. That’s fine, and certainly something we would wholeheartedly support, but it leaves a project billed as a Marvel Television Special Presentation feeling incomplete, unlike Werewolf by Night and The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special. In years to come, when a Disney+ Punisher series has probably run for a few seasons, this criticism will be irrelevant, although, until then, it speaks to how open-ended and unresolved The Punisher: One Last Kill is. Simply put – we want more Frank Castle.
VERDICT: 8/10
The Punisher: One Last Kill is the deepest, darkest dive into the tormented psyche of Frank Castle ever put to screen. After 40 appearances as the iconic Marvel Comics character, Jon Bernthal outdoes his exceptional prior work with his best performance as Frank Castle to date. Wearing years of torment and loss on his face so authentically and painfully, it is difficult to not become consumed and moved by the sorrow Bernthal’s character languishes in. After a first half that serves as meditative character study, the special transitions into 20+ minutes of brutal, masterfully choreographed action. Blending John Wick: Chapter 2 and The Raid, the story bolsters a blissful simplicity that gives Punisher fans exactly what they want in an all-too succinct runtime: a moving understanding of Frank Castle’s trauma and no-holds-barred, bad ass action. If there’s any complaint to lodge against The Punisher: One Last Kill, it’s that it fails to resolve its central story and, in turn, operates more as the first episode of a new series than a standalone special. But, if the Marvel Television Special Presentation is intended as a soft-launch, proof-of-concept of a Disney+ Punisher series, then count us among the (likely) many who will wholeheartedly get behind that. The Punisher: One Last Kill represents the MCU at its grittiest, Jon Bernthal’s Frank Castle at his most captivating, and The Punisher at his most brutal, delivering in abundance everything anyone could ever want from a Punisher special.