Punisher: One Last Kill - Cal’s Review - 9/10

Some spoilers ahead - be warned.

I’m a recent Punisher fan, it took me a while to delve into the Marvel shows, but in prep for Doomsday, I’m getting through them, Punisher S1/S2 included.

That led me to this, the special feature they launched pre-spidey to push Punisher into a new era, and to join the MCU.

Now, I loved the show, but at times (particularly in S2) you can for sure get caught up in the semantics of the situational dangers, rather than the heavier and grittier Punisher action that I found myself craving more of, but One Last Kill buries that entirely. The action sequence that spans across 10 minutes is a bold undertaking, with what I can only imagine involved some intensive practice, a lot of extras and practical effects, a whole bunch of one-shot scenes that needed to move across the screen seamlessly, and all whilst maintaining the performance and flow of the story.. and they nailed it.

It also managed to tie up some loose ends between S2 ending and now, showing Frank’s journey through even more grief and PTSD, which they showed in very emotionally gratifying and easy to follow ways. Only for him to realise by the end, that the only way he’s ever going to be able to continue on, is to continue Punishing those who set out to harm others for their own gain or selfishness, poetic, albeit savage, but that’s exactly the character that Frank Castle is.

Given the time constraints of the special being roughly 35-40 minutes in length (not including the lengthy credits), they really achieved that full circle feeling of showing his struggle and where he’s been, then moving on to having his back against the wall again, being forced to fight, and being forced to re-realise that he MUST continue, regardless of how hard it is for him. He is at home in the danger, the marine never left him.. awesome.

As someone with a bunch of Punisher comics, and who has recently consumed all of the Jon Bernthal run of Punisher on the screen from start to end, this is for sure the best of it, and his appearance in Brand New Day was equally fun, and serves as a massive scoop of excitement for what’s to come for this iteration of the character in the MCU’s near future.

Cal’s Review - 9/10