TV Review: The Punisher: One Last Kill

From the time it was announced last year, The Punisher: One Last Kill has been a strange proposition. Of all the Netflix Marvel series, The Punisher was obviously the one least-suited to a shift into the Disney-ified MCU; the original two-season series was a violent reflection on grief, trauma, and mental health issues, filtered through the endlessly gory pursuit of vengeance that has defined Jon Bernthal’s growly, sweaty take on the character. And after a wandering second season, which saw Frank entwined with dangers both new and familiar, it was incredibly unclear what the future, if any, held for The Punisher after the season debuted in January 2019 – and became even more tenuous as The Punisher’s moniker oddly became police iconography in the real world, turning an outlier secondary character into an icon of something dark and unsettling.

Following a brief return in the first season of Daredevil: Born Again where it was incredibly unclear what interest the MCU had in Frank Castle (outside of drawing very light, though unsettling parallels between the adoption of the Punisher logo in worlds real and fictional), it seemed Marvel may be content to have Frank Castle exist on the sidelines, occasionally popping in for a grunt-and-blood filled cameo whenever a less-murderous MCU hero needed to do some “ethical” murdering around New York. But with the announcement of One Last Kill, it appeared Disney was at least willing to give Frank Castle an appropriately bombastic sendoff – until they preceded the special’s release by revealing his presence in the upcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which removed any potential tension of this special being a farewell to the the grim-dark, bullet-riddled world of Frank Castle’s life and memories.

Instead, The Punisher: One Last Kill mostly reveals itself to be nothing more than a vanity project for 45 minutes; too short to be a film or a The Punisher episode, and too slight to provide any propulsion or profundity for the character, One Last Kill is mostly a rehash of The Punisher season one’s ruminations on revenge, bloodlust – and what happens when Frank becomes untethered from his own humanity, haunted by the ghosts of his dead wife and children (does this episode feature his wife in a cliche “bedroom pillow” flashback sequence? You better goddamn believe it) and his best friend Curtis. Hell, the only thing missing that would make this a full-on rehash of the original series would be the return of Ben Barnes’ Jigsaw, but One Last Kill is not really interested in The Punisher’s arc as a character, and more just wants to sit in his depressed vibe for 20 minutes, before filling the back half of the special with the nonsensical, belligerently indulgent violence that defined the two middling (though occasionally fascinating) seasons of the Netflix series.

Despite Bernthal’s committed, animalistic performance and clear love for the character, One Last Kill just doesn’t have anything to say, ending before it really has a chance to do anything to push Frank Castle forward as a character. After opening with him pounding pills, chugging liquor, and doing pullups until he vomits and his fingers bleed, One Last Kill sees Castle get threatened by the last remaining family member of the Gnucci crime family, whose murderous end has led to… total lawlessness in little Sicily, something that nobody else in the MCU seemingly gives a shit about? What happened to the Clean Streets initiative, when punks are throwing dogs in front of cars and assaulting people openly on the street? Each creative decision, or lack thereof, in One Last Kill is more baffling than the last – especially when considering the clear love Bernthal (who co-wrote the special, alongside director Reinaldo Marcus Green) has for the character and performance, neither of which are given anything to do but repeat the same moments and actions for a character – only this time with a less logical plot to surround it, which renders the entire affair a disappointing, loud nothingburger that only has a few incredibly unsettlingly violent sequences (like a scene where Castle stabs a tattooed man over and over and over with a pen, to the point it becomes disturbingly sadistic).

It’s a huge disappointment; Castle the vengeful sociopath is still an interesting character in a world occupied by the likes of Spider-Man and Daredevil, and One Last Kill presented an opportunity for Castle to strike out on a new path, integrating the PTSD-riddled character and his purist form of vigilantism against the more nuanced approaches of the other costumed heroes around him. But rather than pick up on anything the series had to say in its second season, or in Castle’s short appearances in Born Again‘s first season, One Last Kill presents a Frank Castle captured and preserved in amber, a toy Disney can pull off the shelf when its aging fans complain too much about its material becoming childish and overly sanitized. Even for the most hardcore fans of The Punisher‘s 26-episode slog of fascinating self-discovery and incredibly repetitive fight sequences of the original series will find nothing new or interesting here, either in the static depiction of Castle, how One Last Kill tells its self-contained, incredibly slight story, or the disappointing lack of direction it provides the character for his past, present… or future, begging the question of why the character was brought back in the first place, as he’s clearly out of place in this more superficial, neutered version of Disney’s MCU.

Other thoughts/observations:

• I guess One Last Kill gives us Frank Castle stabbing people in the throat to Louie Armstrong’s version of “Le Vie En Rose”? Unfortunately, this just feels like a scene built on the same aesthetic template as Bullseye’s scene in Born Again‘s “Gloves Off”.
  
• hey, there’s Andre Royo!
  
• Frank Castle is haunted by the ghosts of his friends and family in the first half of the special, sequences that were easily the most haunting interpretations offered of Castle’s mind in any of his MCU appearances.
  
• Obligatory Karen cameo!
  
• One Last Kill is 44 minutes long; 7 of those are spent with Castle sitting at his family’s grave, and the main fight sequence of the episode runs about 14 minutes. That only leaves the special 20 minutes to set up, develop, and execute an original story, which probably explains why everything related to plot or emotion feels utterly wasted.