The Punisher: One Last Kill Review: Bernthal’s Punisher Remains Marvel’s Darkest Hero

Jon Bernthal’s iteration of The Punisher is widely recognized as the gnarliest and most brutally raw adaptation of the character audiences have seen yet. That brutality continues in The Punisher: One Last Kill, a new Marvel Television Special Presentation that continues the vigilante anti-hero’s journey post Daredevil. One thing is for sure: Disney kept their promise that existing characters wouldn’t be watered down after the move from Netflix to Disney+. But while there are all of the bullets and bloodshed you could ask for, there’s little else of significance in the one-off story to justify its existence.

What is The Punisher: One Last Kill about?

Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal, Spider-Man: Brand New Day) is The Punisher, a one-man army fighting a war against the criminals of New York City. As Frank begins to grapple with the idea of bringing that war to an end, he’s forced back into an encounter even more violent and dangerous than anything he’s faced before.

The Punisher: One Last Kill review

The Punisher: One Last Kill gives Jon Bernthal his first writing credit. It makes sense that he’d be given more creative control over the character that he’s portrayed for the last decade, but the script winds up feeling unpolished and incomplete. A lot of that is likely because the Special clocks in at a runtime shorter than an episode of most television series. With only forty-eight minutes to work with, there isn’t sufficient time to give the character the arc they’re striving for. There’s a forced conflict, a wave of bloody killings, and a resolution all happening so quickly that there’s no time to sit with the deeper, emotionally charged storyline that’s teased.

Still, Bernthal brings a ferocity to the character that we haven’t seen in earlier adaptations. There’s an animalistic quality that Bernthal has mastered, delivering grunts and roars with each swing of a blood-spattered blade, blind leap through a window, or exploding burst through drywall. But there’s another side to Frank Castle: the side of a broken-hearted man struggling with PTSD and the traumatic loss of his family. As convincing as Bernthal is as an unhinged killer, it’s his expressions of unimaginable emotional suffering that hit the hardest.

This feels like the most cinematic version of the character we’ve seen. The stunts feel large, the cinematography is fantastic, and the setup (utilizing an iconic villain from the comics) had me genuinely stoked for an event-level story that was never fully delivered. With an additional hour, this could have been the definitive Punisher movie. It feels unfair to blame all of its shortcomings on the runtime, though. After all, Werewolf by Night featured a similar runtime with much stronger results, and Thomas Jane’s Dirty Laundry is an epic Punisher short film, delivering everything fans wanted with only ten minutes.

The clearest indicator of how successful the Special will be with fans is the quality of its action. The Punisher: One Last Kill undoubtedly delivers action worthy of the character, launching Frank into an epic battle against a plethora of unnamed opponents to serve as canon fodder. Grunt after grunt, stab after stab, The Punisher punishes criminals while serving as Judge, Jury, and Executioner. And at the end of the day, that’s what fans really want to see. Everything else is just extra.

Is The Punisher: One Last Kill worth watching?

Fans of The Punisher love the character for the darkness he brings to an otherwise colorful and fantastical universe. They want to see Bernthal’s brooding adaptation dispatching of faceless goons in the most callous and grotesque manner imaginable. In that regard, fans will have a good time. It’s a brisk viewing (too brisk in my opinion) of senseless brutality and solid action choreography with no real impact on the larger universe it exists within. Is it essential viewing? Absolutely not. Is it worth an hour of your time? For sure.

The Punisher: One Last Kill Review: Bernthal’s Punisher Remains Marvel’s Darkest Hero