Josh Reviews The Punisher: One Last Kill
One of the many things that disappointed me in Daredevil: Born Again season two was the complete absence of Frank Castle, the Punisher. When I heard that Marvel was releasing a special one-shot Punisher special immediately after the end of Born Again season two, I assumed the special would catch us up with what Frank was doing while Matt Murdock & co. battled Mayor Wilson Fisk. I also hoped this would help assuage my annoyance at how Frank vanished from the Born Again story.
Sadly, The Punisher: One Last Kill did none of those things. This muddled mess might be my least favorite of anything MCU-related. What a disappointment this was!
I’m not sure where to begin. Let’s start with this special’s annoying refusal to give us a hint as to when this takes place. Is this happening concurrently with the events of Born Again season two? Afterwards, in the void left after Fisk leaves town? Is this a flashback, designed to bridge the gap between the Punisher Netflix show (which I did not watch) and Frank’s recent appearances in the MCU? I have no earthly idea.
The show seems to take place in New York City, but it’s in some sort of insane, Mad Max meets Death Wish crime apocalypse version of NYC. I don’t mind that different MCU projects have different flavors, and so for example the NYC of the Spider-Man movies might seem cleaner and friendlier than that of a Daredevil TV show. But this show is difficult to square with the rest of the MCU.
This is the most unhinged version of Frank Castle I’ve seen in these Marvel shows so far. (I enjoyed Frank in the second season of Netflix’s Daredevil show, and the first season of the Disney+ Daredevil: Born Again show. I didn’t watch the Netflix Punisher show that spun off of Daredevil. I like Frank as a supporting character, but I wasn’t up for a whole Netflix TV show focused on the guy. So I can’t judge how similar or different this version of Frank is from that show. It’s certainly far different from the Frank I saw on Daredevil and Daredevil: Born Again.) This Frank is seriously mentally ill — cutting himself and seeing visions of dead people. Now, I am not opposed to this approach. If you think about the character from the comics, who is so tortured by the death of his family that he’s devoted his life to hunting down and murdering criminals, it’s not too hard to argue that he is seriously mentally ill! But I don’t think this approach works here. First off, it’s too large a leap from where we left Frank at the end of Born Again season one. Second, I didn’t find it that compelling. Jon Bernthal gives the performance his all, and he is eminently watchable, but I’m just not that interested in watching a Punisher who’s crying and slicing up his own body and then trying to kill himself in a cemetary. Why is this guy the hero of a show? If I were to really buy into this character’s plight, then I should be hoping he’ll go get help immediately, not that he’ll unlock all his guns and become the Punisher again and start murdering lots of people. But that is clearly what the show wants the audience to be rooting for, so the whole conception seems at odds with itself. I just don’t get it. What is the point of this story? In the end, Frank doesn’t get any healing. The special ends with Frank back on the streets doting out vigilante death. He doesn’t make any effort to actually help the homeless vet who we met in the special’s opening, like by getting him a new dog or something. No, the answer just seems to be more cold-blooded murder in the middle of the street. That’s the happy ending of this show??
Speaking of murder — the whole second half of the special is an extended, brutal action sequence in which a million bad guys (who are all nice enough to put on masks, so we and Frank can tell them apart from the civilians) all try to kill Frank in the apartment complex where he lives, but Frank kills all of them first. If you’re just looking for violent action, then maybe you’ll be happy with this. The action is definitely thrilling, and well-staged! But I found it empty.
This special has a lot of the same type of sloppy storytelling that annoyed me about Born Again season two. We see on the news a reporter saying that Frank’s whereabouts unknown, but he’s hanging out at his family’s graves. I guess they’re not looking too hard for him!! Even old lady crime boss finds him easily. (That crime boss, by the way, is Ma Gnucci, played by Judith Light. I was delighted to see Ms. Light again — she was, of course, Angela on Who’s the Boss?, but she’s done a lot of other great work, including winning an Emmy for her guest appearance on Poker Face. I wish Ms. Light had more to do.) At the end of the special, Frank just strolls through a bunch of cop cars. So are the cops not looking for him? Frank magically heals from a deep shoulder wound, but that seems to happen all the time on superhero shows (it has happened a million times on Daredevil and Born Again), so I guess I can’t ding the show too much for that. How about the weirdness that one of these small NYC apartments somehow has two stories inside it???
I was thrilled to see Andre Royo (Bubbles on The Wire!!) as a friendly shopkeeper, trying to protect his shop and his family from all the chaos. (Chaos with Frank seems mostly responsible for, so I found it funny when Mr. Royo’s character thanked Frank at the end.) Andre Royo is an amazing actor, so I wish he had more to do here.
What is this special? Was this intended as a backdoor pilot for a new Punisher series, with Frank vs. Ma Gnucci? I truly don’t know what to make of this. It definitely wasn’t for me.
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