Jon Bernthal’s return as The Punisher in the MCU took a while, but he was a great addition to Daredevil: Born Again Season 1 and it’s just good to have him back. And while he didn’t return for the second chapter, we knew it was for good reason, both his own special – The Punisher: One Last Kill – and an odd but exciting team-up with Tom Holland’s Spider-Man in Brand New Day later this summer. Even with the question of how he’ll integrate into a movie aimed at a broader family audience, One Last Kill immediately promised the intoxicating brand of violence the character has built an enthusiastic audience on.
At the same time, One Last Kill introduces a Punisher very unlike the traditional image. A Punisher defined (at least at first) not by rage, but by sadness. A Punisher who cries. A Punisher who acknowledges he needs help. This is what’s left when Punisher has nobody left on his kill list to punish. He’s basically the only Marvel superhero (or villain, for that matter) who doesn’t just medicate himself with heroism, which is a strange concept, remarkable for its rarity in this universe. As one of his haunting visions asks him, “what’s your purpose now, Marine?” That is both the story here and an appropriate summary of some of my feelings on the project, because while it’s solid, it’s not the home run I would have liked it to be.
Rating: 3 out of 5
The waters run pretty deep in One Last Kill. As I’ve already said – and as will be said a lot elsewhere – this follows the recent trend set by Wonder Man for unexpected MCU releases. In other words, it’s notable for its difference, because it’s almost like a Heart of Darkness style descent into the condition of being The Punisher. It’s a little morose, admittedly, but that’s clearly by design, and there’s more of a throughline here from Bernthal and fellow MCU star Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s The Bear prequel, Gary than you might expect. It’s still recognizable as a continuation of the Netflix show (with some caveats I’ll come to), and you can feel Bernthal’s affection for the character – and not just that, for the complexity of the character.
The special balances melodrama with some deeper thinking, and at its heart is a beautifully compelling, simple idea: what if every desperate fiend and killer was turned against Frank at once to make him atone for his “crimes”? What if a villain did to the Punisher what he did to his targets? We’re essentially presented with the MCU’s take on Die Hard – a one versus many bone breaker with a lot more blood, a lot more psychological depth, and considerably less comic kill quips. If it wasn’t for the opening 25 minutes or so showing how far Frank has fallen since his last appearance, you could be forgiven for thinking this was just an excuse to platform some heady violence.
And the action is also ridiculous in the best way: hyper-violent, teeth-shatteringly intense, and almost dirty-feeling in its choreography. Watching Frank take down would-be assassins while literally on fire, as Louis Armstrong’s “La Vie En Rose” plays isn’t exactly high art, but it’s definitely joyful. Imagine The Raid, but backwards – an exploitation actioner where Bernthal charges around, roaring from the pit of his stomach, and piling up a kill count that must be the highest for any hero in the MCU so far (other than the accidental collateral damage). Unlike the corridor scenes Netflix’s offshoot universe popularized, Punisher’s violence here feels more desperate, less glossy, and with less obvious choreography, to its credit. It all works very well to underline the mythology of the character, even if it poses a problem for his next appearance in Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
The highlight of the new elements is Ma Gnucci (Judith Light), who drives the narrative by coming after Frank for his murder of her whole family (though she weirdly doesn’t mention the only actual Gnucci killed on screen in the Netflix series – Tony). She’s a dark mirror of Frank, motivated by the same thing as him (obviously, in very different circumstances), and Light’s performance is great. Sadly, she’s underused thanks to the short run-time, and the logical payoff to her story that’s promised simply doesn’t happen for some reason. It’s almost like an entire coda was left out, and I found myself mentally plotting it out in frustration. Ego’s a funny thing.
The strength of the writing is tied to Frank’s characterization, and there’s not as many positives to note when you zoom into other specifics of the story. I’ve already mentioned the Ma Gnucci issue, because that creative decision does not work with the overall ending, but there’s a more fundamental issue. Taken as a simple story, where Frank starts with a crisis of identity and a mental health crisis rolled into one and is forced “back into the game” to reckon with what he is, One Last Kill doesn’t work as simply as that reads. Not to get into too many spoilers, but Frank’s arc is a little unconvincing because of his starting point and the dramatic shift from being a reflective examination of his psyche to being an action/exploitation. That means the most interesting, refreshing part of the story gets pushed back.
The result is that One Last Kill basically feels like a redo of The Punisher Season 2, retreading a dramatic arc we’ve already seen. So if you’ve just rewatched his earlier appearances in anticipation of this release, you’ll get a wicked sense of deja vu. We are, in the end, confronted with the fact that the Punisher is still very, very good at what he does. And who wouldn’t want to see more of that? But One Last Kill never quite justifies its existence beyond showing things we’ve already seen before. If Netflix’s two Punisher seasons had been explicitly written out of canon, I could perhaps understand that, but for anyone already familiar with the story, the repetition is harder to push aside. And as with anything, not quite understanding why a thing needed to exist is a pretty damning realization.
One Last Kill also takes itself a fraction too seriously: compare it to the excellent Bullseye diner sequence in Daredevil: Born Again Season 2, and you see the problem. At one point, we’re invited to watch, in horrifying close-up, Frank kill a mook with a pen. It’s inventive, but it’s really f*cking horrible to watch, and there’s just no other way to say it. I’m not entirely sure whether the message here is that Frank’s bad for doing it, that we should think it’s an inventive kill and whoop along, or whether there’s something deeper I’m missing. It’s obviously intended to be a reaction to the family Frank is protecting being under threat, but this goes beyond functional violence. And were it not for the meditative attempt to peel Frank’s layers, I would probably know better what the message was. But it sits a little oddly with that, and I just kind of felt bad for the guy getting stabbed. Maybe that was intentional.
The serious tone also makes Bernthal’s trademark grunting and roaring a little much. He’s more like a caricature than a character at times, and while it works sparingly, it feels unfortunate to admit that it might be a bit too cartoonish in the context of the rest of his performance. Also, it’s a small thing, but for all of the grubby, raw and realistic feel, there’s one particularly bad moment of CGI that stands out like a sore thumb. It also feels so unnecessary, but perhaps computer graphics are just cheaper than throwing stuntmen around these days? Both of these things won’t bother most people, and they don’t lose it points here, but both are distractions.
What do you think of The Punisher: One Last Kill? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
