'The Punisher: One Last Kill' Review
- Josh Davis
- 30 minutes ago
- 4 min read
TV Special.
Release Date: 05/12/26 [Disney+]
Genre: Action. Adventure. Crime. Drama. Thriller.
MPAA: Rated TVMA.
The Verdict: A Maybe
Where and when does a soldier’s job end?
That’s the question rattling around The Punisher: One Last Kill, a grim, blood-soaked Marvel Television Special Presentation on Disney+ directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green and co-written by Green and Jon Bernthal, who returns as Frank Castle.
In the opening scene, Frank is an utterly lost and broken man. He came home from the Marines, watched his family get brutally murdered, and reinvented himself as a vigilante in the name of revenge – not just justice, but the bloody, brutal killing of everyone responsible. But even that wasn’t enough.
Frank sits alone in a stark, empty apartment, doing pull-ups until his hands bleed and drinking hard liquor straight from the bottle until he pukes, because testosterone. “Mother” by Danzig plays in the background because, of course it does. He’s tormented, but in the most ripped, barechested, manly way possible.
The ghosts of Frank’s past flicker all around him: his Marine family, his wife and children, a brief vision of Karen Page. They’re not there to teach him a lesson or guide him back from the brink. They feel more like the last sparks of a mind breaking apart under so much pain, guilt and exhaustion.
Then, just as Frank is about to stare too long down the literal barrel of a gun, one last figure from his revenge tour comes back into view, looking to unleash her own vengeance for what he took from her. Cue dozens of street-level thugs coming for Frank’s life.
There’s music. There’s action. There’s a shitload of blood. There is slow-motion violence, an impossible cascade of weapons Frank knows exactly how to use, and a few improvised household items turned into instruments of spectacular damage.
One Last Kill, ironically, is about many, many kills. It’s John Wick crossed with Rambo, all 1980s machismo and muscle filtered through the modern refinements of post-Matrix stunt choreography. It is also possibly the bloodiest thing ever to carry a Disney logo.
But is it any good?
As storytelling, One Last Kill is thin. It doesn’t so much move Frank Castle forward as lift him out of a pool of his own blood and vomit, give him just enough purpose to put the outfit back on, and set him up for whatever comes next, likely Spider-Man: Brand New Day or more Daredevil: Born Again. Bernthal is confirmed to appear in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and the special is positioned as a bridge between his Netflix past, Born Again, and his future MCU appearances.
So, yes, it’s moving a chess piece into place – not to end the game, but to set up the next move. In that way, it’s not terribly satisfying storytelling.
The Punisher, on screen, has never been an especially deep character. He’s a tragic figure, sure, and an avatar for soldiers who came home after being asked to do terrible things, then struggled to find purpose in civilian life. He has also become a symbol of vigilante violence in ways that have been misread, bastardized and weaponized, both in reality and in the Daredevil universe itself.
This review won’t pretend to examine decades of Punisher comics. But surely, across all those incarnations, the character has been used to tell richer stories about military trauma, violence, grief and the war machinery that grinds people down. That story deserves care and nuance – poetry and brutality. It deserves to stare into the abyss and find something more than yet another hallway full of bodies.
On screen, whether played by Bernthal, Dolph Lundgren, Thomas Jane or Ray Stevenson, Frank Castle has only gone so deep. Ironically, Stevenson, who played Castle in Punisher: War Zone, gave one of the best portrayals of a soldier struggling to come home as Titus Pullo in HBO’s incredible two-season run of Rome.
Here, Bernthal mostly has two volumes: a low, gravelly grunt and a guttural war cry. There are moments where he seems to be reaching for something deeper, but the special never quite plunges into the inky black depths of the soul. It occasionally circles that darkness, then starts breaking bones.
As an action showcase, The Punisher: One Last Kill absolutely delivers. The violence is brutal, gory and often visually striking. It thumps, crunches and spurts. Cinematographer Robert Elswit gives the whole thing weight and texture, and Kris Bowers’ score helps keep the thing rumbling along.
If that’s the goal, audiences could do far worse. And for MCU completists, this is essential viewing if only to watch the next chess piece slide into position. At just under an hour, there have been far worse, far more grueling things required to keep up with this universe.
But judged as a standalone piece of art? There are better soldier stories, like Rome. Better comic-book shows, like this year’s Wonder Man. Better revenge operas, like literally any John Wick movie.
One Last Kill is loud, bloody and somewhat effective. It gives Frank Castle something to do, even if it never quite figures out what he means.