'The Punisher: One Last Kill' Is Shockingly Disposable

These are dark times, so I don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum here. If all you want from The Punisher: One Last Kill is to see Jon Bernthal’s Frank Castle mow through bad guys, you will get that in spades. The Punisher punishes in such gratuitously violent ways that there’s going to be a whole lot of whiplash when he’s joking it up with Spider-Man later this summer. But that’s always been a Marvel Comics thing. One minute, Garth Ennis has Frank turning the Irish mob into chunks. The next, he’s getting punked by Squirrel Girl. That’s the funny pages, baby!

But, again, if all you wanted was John Wick in a Punisher skin and you’re content with that, barrel roll on out of here. One Last Kill has you covered. If you wanted a character study that brought something new to the table, well, you’re as SOL as anyone that crosses Frank.

In theory, One Last Kill happens some time after Daredevil: Born Again Season 1 but before Spider-Man: Brand New Day except you’d never know it by watching it. Despite being positioned as a capper to Born Again Season 2, there is absolutely zero connection to the events of that show even though the Season 1 finale ended on a cliffhanger with Frank being captured by Kingpin’s Anti-Vigilante Task Force. Apparently, the official story is “he got out.” Neat.

When we catch up with Frank, he’s in a bad way. While Danzig’s “Mother” — an absolutely stellar needle drop, by the way — suggests we’re about to see our anti-hero getting pumped for some punishing, the vibe jarringly shifts from bad*ss to depressing as Frank pukes all over himself. Turns out he’s been chugging booze and pills, which sets up the bleak hole he’ll wallow in for a sizable chunk of One Last Kill’s short runtime.

You see, Frank has punished everyone he can at this point. After wiping out the Gnucci crime family, he’s now fully avenged his slain wife and kids, leaving him with no mission. Clearly, Frank does not adapt to peacetime well, which is supremely baffling considering his actions have turned the streets right outside his door into the type of lawless Big Apple that can only exist in the fevered, pants-wetting imagination of rural conservatives.

Frank literally walks through a warzone unfolding around him like a zombie because we’re doing serious PTSD drama right now, and dangit, Jon Bernthal is going to do some acting. That’s why he wrote the thing. In a scene we’ve seen 100s of times across several seasons of television, Frank is breaking down at his family’s grave site. Only, for some reason, he seems to be laser-focused on his daughter. You’d forget he also had a son and wife, that’s how weird it is.

Anyway, Frank is about to blow his brains out after packing away his Punisher gear for good. Except he stops when he sees his daughter standing in front of him, which turns out to be a hallucination making him break down even further. Again, Jonny Bernthal came to act. After going back to his apartment to wallow some more, Frank finds Ma Gnucci (Judith Light) waiting for him. She did not enjoy him killing her whole family, so she’s put a bounty on Frank’s head and blah blah blah. Welcome to what we all came for.

One Last Kill finally lets Frank off the chain, and it’s punishin’ time. He tears through dudes Raid-style, and it almost makes up for the bleak first half of this endeavor. There is one jarringly bad CGI scene that I thought I was crazy when I saw it, so I’m glad others have been calling it out. But for the most part, this is primo Frank.

Where we do get a slight deviation from the norm is when Frank has a bead on Ma Gnucci on the streets, but lets her go to save Bubbles from The Wire and his family who run the local coffee shop. While this is meant to be a heroic moment, it’s also viscerally dark as Frank finishes off the last goon by stabbing him with a pen for a considerable amount of screentime. Inexplicably, this savage murder endears him to Bubbles’ daughter, who can’t stop hugging Frank’s leg before giving him a paper rose she colored.

With a new lease on life, I guess, Frank takes the paper rose to his daughter’s grave and retrieves the key to his Punisher gear. Quitting time is over. Not only does Frank get himself a haircut, but this is an All-New Punisher who walks around in broad daylight in his spiffy movie-ready suit, killing people on demand for random citizens. Roll credits.

Let me be clear, I loved Jon Bernthal’s performance in both the original Daredevil series on Netflix and The Punisher Season 1. Despite everything I wrote above, I actually enjoy his version of the character! I also like the Garth Ennis comics that have been a huge part of his portrayal. One Last Kill had all of that in the mix, yet my god, was it dreadful. Some things just work better on the page.

There’s also the whole PTSD angle. Over the years, Bernthal has spoken about how he wants his performance to honor combat veterans, and that is completely admirable. Those folks went through things that most of us can’t even imagine. That said, it’s really hard to square the use of PTSD when the only way Frank can ever snap out of his funk is by becoming Murder Man. In One Last Kill, Frank is literally suicidal and cutting off tattoos until he decides it’s time to start shooting crooks again. I know this is a Marvel show, but freaking yikes.

P.S. I probably should have mentioned this up top, but if you’re a dog lover, skip the first ten minutes. Trust me.