Jon Bernthal's take on Frank Castle – AKA merciless Marvel "hero" the Punisher – was surprisingly absent from the excellent recent season of Daredevil: Born Again. So what's he been up to? Well, if the latest "Marvel Special Presentation" is anything to go by, the answer is mainly sitting in his house, growling, punching walls and generally feeling pretty sorry for himself.
He has good reason to, of course. The turning point in the Punisher's back story and the driving force behind his ruthless quest for revenge is the murder of his family. The first half of One Last Kill lingers in Frank's misery, showing him as a truly broken man. He's hit rock bottom and he's thinking of ending things...
And then a mysterious woman played by Judith Light shows up and tells him that she too has lost her family. He listens, perhaps thinking that she may have a mission for him and a reason to carry on. It's quickly revealed to be a trick, however: this is Ma Gnucci, the mob matriarch of a family that the Punisher has previously slaughtered. She's put a bounty on his head and now every armed henchman in the city has set their sights on Frank.
Maximum gunishment
The title, One Last Kill, it turns out, is a bit of a misnomer. Why? Because Frank doesn't sneak in one last kill, but loads. This is an absurdly violent production, especially considering its comparatively short runtime (it clocks in at a little under 44 minutes, not counting the credits). If you thought the bracingly nasty scenes with Bullseye in Daredevil: Born Again were boundary-pushing for Marvel, then this will leave your jaw on the floor.
Director Reinaldo Marcus Green makes you wait for it, though, and therein lies One Last Kill's biggest flaw. The first half of the episode, which is co-written by Bernthal and Green, clearly wants you to feel like you're in the Punisher's head. It works in that you get to spend a lot of time with a very sad, very angry man wallowing in regret, but it can't help but feel like we're simply going over old ground from the character's two Netflix seasons.
Release date: May 13
Available on: Disney Plus
Director: Reinaldo Marcus Green
Runtime: 48 minutes
Thankfully, once it reaches the halfway mark, One Last Kill comes good and lives up to the Punisher's lethal reputation. Hordes of goons show up and give Frank an excuse to shoot, kick, and stab his way out of a housing project while grunting variations of "Hurrrgh!" and "Grurrrgh!" a lot. This is, effectively, the same setup as 2011's The Raid or 2012's Dredd, but given how much fun those films are, that's a perfectly acceptable choice. One Last Kill is similarly single-minded when it comes to its mass baddy annihilation.
It's well done, the action kinetic, the music all growling rock riffage. It benefits, too, from moving the fights outside and onto the sunny streets. Sure, the film's depiction of New York as a crime-ridden hellhole makes it look more nightmarish than RoboCop's Detroit, but the final act is strikingly visually appealing – in large part, no doubt, thanks to the presence of veteran cinematographer and Paul Thomas Anderson collaborator Robert Elswitt.
Does One Last Kill need to exist or offer any important developments before Frank's next appearance, in Spider-Man: Brand New Day? No, not really. If anything it simply restates who the Punisher is and why he does what he does. But, slight though it is, it does at least remind you how much gnarly, morally-pretty-terrible fun this character can be – and why he's unlikely to be joining the goody two-shoes Avengers any time soon.
The Punisher: One Last Kill is streaming now on Disney Plus. For more, check out our guide on how to watch the Marvel movies in order.
