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The Punisher: One Last Kill

I have to be honest with y'all. I didn't enjoy this as much as I wanted to. It is clear that the Punisher is a character that Jon Beranthal loves and is a passion project for him. He even gets a writing credit and producer credit. But at a certain point, you keep trying to mine depth for a character that we don't need it on. The Punisher's family was killed by the mob, so he wants revenge. That's the story.

Then they layer on PTSD and his time in the special forces. They did this in the two seasons he had on Netflix, so this is ground WELL covered. In this special, we deal with all of that again. It's like seeing Batman or Superman's origin repeated in every iteration of the character. We know the back story, so let's move on to something new.

I'm at least thankful this was one long episode and not a series. I  would not be able to stick around for seven more hours of the life and times of Melancholy Frank. He barely says a word for about 75% of this episode. He speaks when haunted by his demons, but he is just being standoffish and weird the rest of the time. Also, this Punisher doesn't have a scream that he hasn't met.

What makes watching the Punisher difficult for me is that they can't contain themselves on the action. They have Frank taking hits like he's a super hero, but he's a regular guy. He's falling off buildings and getting slammed into walls like it is nothing. It's like I'm watching Looney Tunes. What next, an anvil drops on his head? As violent as Daredevil gets, they at least shows restraint. Frank dishing out the violence is not my problem for the most part because the fight choreography is great. It's just that it goes overboard. They try to set up the fight scenes like "The Raid", but this show wishes it was that.

This special episode never explicitly specifies where on the timeline this takes place. You can infer some, but it's not said and that is frustrating because we just saw him at the end of Season one of Daredevil: Born Again and you would think this takes place then? Frank has fallen off since then. 

And this is about to be the most neck beardy complaint I can make but, would it kill them to put Frank in his costume? I came to see The Punisher, not down-on-his-luck guy. 

I really don't have much more to add. I just hope they pick their spots better with his appearances.

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