This article contains spoilers for The Punisher: One Last Kill.
It takes less than five minutes for The Punisher: One Last Kill to kill a puppy. The second scene follows an unhoused veteran (John Douglas Thompson) sitting down to enjoy a meal with his dog. That’s when a group of young men arrive to punch him in the face, steal his hat, and toss his pet in front of an oncoming truck.
Thematically, the scene exists to demonstrate that the world is an ugly, cruel place. But if, by chance, you happened to look down when the dog met its demise, don’t worry. The special will repeat the point again. And again. And again. That’s because The Punisher: One Last Kill doesn’t unfold a plot, examine its characters, or consider the implications of its themes. It simply wants to show that the world is filled with horrible people, and the only hope for the few weak, good people (mostly represented by little girls) is to pray that Frank Castle will treat his PTSD with murder instead of therapy.
Occasionally, One Last Kill makes pretensions to telling a story. News footage and random sound bites inform the viewers that Frank has already killed most of the members of the Gnucci crime family, and the power vacuum has created chaos on the streets. Compelled by visions of his old Marine buddy Curtis Hoyle (Jason R. Moore, returning from the Netflix series) and of his late family, Frank locks up his guns and tries to go out into the world. But then matriarch Ma Gnucci (Judith Light) arrives to announce that she has contracted every evildoer in Little Sicily to come after Frank in revenge for his vendetta against her family.
Thus ends act one of One Last Kill. Act two, which takes up 20 of the special’s 45 minutes, consists of nothing more than watching Frank murder the hordes who attack his apartment building. There’s a little something in there about how the loss of Frank’s family mirrors Ma Gnucci’s loss, and something about how the U.S. mistreats its veterans, but those ideas don’t get much attention. Instead, the special keeps shouting about how Frank has lost everything to violence, has committed violence in return, and now must forever doling out violence anew—but at least he’ll help a couple of kids and their nice parents (one of whom is played by The Wire alum Andre Royo).
Of course, One Last Kill has no interest in exploring the fascist implications of a hero who finds meaning only by killing those who threaten the true community. That missed opportunity is damning enough, but worse is the fact that the action scenes are handled with just as much indifference. The special has stuntmen and coordinators certainly doing hard work, but shaky cameras, poorly blocked shots, and a reliance on music cues (including a Hatebreed needle drop) reduce the action to a derivation of something from a 20-year-old episode of The Shield.
Part of the problem stems from director Reinaldo Marcus Green, whose visual style tends toward the literal, even when trying to be impressionistic. In a moment of crisis, Frank watches a boy run between two school buses, only to find himself, in full Punisher gear, passing by the other side. The one bravura shot of the special is a brief oner following Frank, his head covered by a hoodie, trying to ignore the constant screaming, suffering, and brutality around him.
But given that Jon Bernthal shares writing and producing credits with Green, he must bear equal blame for One Last Kill‘s shortcomings. Bernthal is generally one of the more watchable performers in genre film and television, and he fully commits himself to the part. Every bit of sweat and spit shows up on screen (as does his incredible hair, free of grey; Frank Castle apparently has a stock of Just For Men in his armory). It’s just that Bernthal has no take on the character other than “sad, angry.” Most of Frank’s dialogue consists of grunts and inarticulate shouts, all pitched at a level of intensity that burns out after 10 minutes—well before the final credits roll.
Judith Light fares slightly better as Ma Gnucci, partially because she has only one scene, but also because she chews the scenery so brazenly that One Last Kill briefly becomes ironically funny. If the rest of the special followed her lead, then the special could have been a compelling piece of macho camp. But One Last Kill doesn’t want you to laugh at its subject matter. It wants you to take its themes very seriously, even if it isn’t sure what that theme is.
Full of passionate intensity, but lacking the conviction to explore any of its ideas or treat any of its characters as human beings, One Last Kill has only loud and badly shot action, scene after scene of bad people doing horrible things to one another, sometimes to the benefit of an innocent little child. In the end, the best thing you could say about One Last Kill is that it proves that Marvel can tell stories with different tones—one hopes the Punisher will be a little less gnarly and a little more three-dimensional when he pops up in Spider-Man: Brand New Day this July—and that not everything in the MCU requires homework. Despite some nods to the Netflix series and an appearance by Deborah Ann Woll as Karen Page from Daredevil, Frank exists in a world without the Avengers.
Laudable qualities all, as is Bernthal’s desire to shine a light on the plight of veterans. They just deserve better than a 45-minute special that starts things off by killing a puppy, and stays just as obvious, hackneyed, and unpleasant until the end.
The Punisher: One Last Kill is available to stream on Disney+ now.
