Responding further to Slider_Quinn21's review of ONE LAST KILL: (spoilers)
I don't disagree with why you found it dis-satisfying in some areas, but from an Abed-esque, metatextual standpoint, all of those areas of non-resolution and withheld exposition and avoidance of connective tissue with the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe were willful, not because Jon Bernthal is opposed to them, but because his goals for ONE LAST KILL strike me as prioritizing different concerns. This also seems to be why we don't see Frank shave his beard.
Bear with me...
Frank Castle's first entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe is, regrettably, one of the most convoluted storylines ever lensed in this franchise. Bernthal's performance exuded care, craft, quality and skill: Frank Castle is feral, dangerous, ruthless, and yet has an impeccable morality that balances his murderous, bloodsoaked tactics to any and every threat. Despite being a softened, less sociopathic version of the comic book character (defined largely as a murder addict who has chosen acceptable targets in violent criminals), Bernthal made Frank reassuringly heroic, heartrendingly tragic, and disturbingly dangerous. His performance is compelling and viscerally immediate.
However, the story around Frank Castle in the Netflix shows has been an unfathomable mess.
Season 2 of DAREDEVIL (Netflix) establishes that Frank Castle's family was murdered in a shootout between three rival gangs in Central Park where the Kitchen Irish, Mexican Cartel, and the Dogs of Hell bikers exchanged gunfire with no regard for the civilians having a picnic. Frank savagely hunts down every gang member involved and murders them, and is brought down by Daredevil and charged with multiple murders in what District Attorney Samantha Reyes promoted into the trial of the century and Frank sentenced to life in prison despite the valiant attempts of his Marine commanding officer, Colonel Ray Schoonover, testifying in his defense. After Frank breaks out of prison, it's revealed that Colonel Schoonover and DA Reyes were running a heroin trafficking operation and engineered the three-gang conflict as a sting operation gone wrong to obscure their involvement and further used Frank's trial to distract from their crimes by involving three separate New York gangs in a massive shooting in a public location followed by national attention on a criminal trial and this story is nonsensical.
This convoluted 'conspiracy' of inexplicably covering up crimes by drawing as much attention as possible is the result of the Punisher's extremely simple storyline being stretched to breaking point to pad out the second season of DAREDEVIL, and this overextension continues unabated in the first season of THE PUNISHER.
THE PUNISHER's first season, trying to fill another 13 episodes and give Frank more reasons to be the Punisher after he's supposedly avenged his family, reveals: back in Afghanistan, Frank, Billy Russo, Colonel Schoonover, and William Rawlins were part of an off-the-books wetworks/assassination squad called Cerberus. Unknown to Frank, Cerberus was smuggling heroin back to the US inside the bodies of dead soldiers. Rawlins saw Frank as a potential loose end or whistleblower and organized a complex Central Park gang war between the Kitchen Irish, Mexican Cartel, and the Dogs of Hell bikers with Colonel Schoonover using it as cover to assassinate Frank and his family in order to silence Frank from potentially revealing a drug smuggling operation of which he knew nothing, and Billy Russo wasn't personally involved in the plan but knew it was coming and did nothing to prevent it. Because naturally, when trying to divert attention away from crimes, one wants to involve as many military assets and private contractors and criminal syndicates as possible.
It may seem hard to believe after reading all of the above, but the Punisher is in fact a very simple character: he is a Marine whose family was murdered by criminals and now he wages a high artillery war on crime. None of the additional details above are in any way germane to Frank's purpose and motives and origins. The added complexities are confused and confusing, filled with redundancies and irrelevancies, and Season 2 piles on even more with Amy Bendix's secret ledger which has nothing to do with Billy Russo and Krista Dumont's romance which barely intersects with Madani's hunt for Russo which does not connect to John Pilgrim's crisis of confidence.
For two seasons of THE PUNISHER, Jon Bernthal presented a purposeful, driven performance within a TV show that was meandering and aimless, struggling to contrive more and more reasons for Frank to be the Punisher.
ONE LAST KILL, co-written by Jon Bernthal, is a direct rejoinder to every previous PUNISHER production in which he has ever performed. The Special Presentation format of 51 minutes reduces Frank to his simplest core elements: he is a force of relentless violence in a city of sadistic predators; he is haunted by the deaths of innocents; he declares war on violent criminals.
There is no Byzantine Marine/CIA/DHS/Kitchen Irish/Mexican Cartel/Dogs of Hell/Anvil/Testament Industries/NYC DA/Veterans Affairs/Weapon X/Hellfire Club/Famous Original Ray’s Pizza conspiracy regarding Frank's past or present efforts to kill him. There is a troubled Frank Castle; there is a vindictive and bloodthirsty Ma Gnucci seeking revenge for Frank destroying her crime family; there are Ma Gnucci's forces bringing violent death upon Frank's apartment building. The special is straightforward and focused. Frank is a creature of violence in a land ruled by violence who has lost his capacity to do battle until war burns down his front door.
Frank is snapped out of his withdrawal from the world, acting on pure, savage instinct against those who mean him and his neighbours harm. The thugs and predators of Little Sicily ravage their victims with impunity only to find they have unleashed a monster who feeds on the suffering and agony and death of the guilty, who exists simply to plow forward through the ranks of violent criminals with gunfire and grenades. It is primal, minimalistic, and while psychologically complex, the plot is utterly devoid of needless complication. The Netflix seasons tied themselves in knots to give Frank a new reason to punish evil every 2 - 4 episodes. ONE LAST KILL dispenses with any need for conspiracy-based motivations and simply deposits Frank in a world where his violence is a necessity and war is his default.
ONE LAST KILL makes a cursory connection to BORN AGAIN, tacitly indicating that Frank's mental paralysis and hallucinations are why he failed to return to Matt and Karen. However, ONE LAST KILL is very clearly not about tying into BORN AGAIN or a Spider-Man movie. ONE LAST KILL is about shedding and dispensing all of the narrative convolutions surrounding Bernthal's Punisher and to refine him into his purest, clearest and most propulsive depiction: as a force of vengeful, bloodsoaked wrath; a demonic cry of outrage cast by the innocent against those who would harm them. The immediacy is why Frank goes straight from the deranged madness of the apartment building battle to reconnect with his family to donning his skull insignia to cleanse the streets of monsters without the special stopping to show him shave or groom himself. ONE LAST KILL does not pause to show Frank shaving; it cuts to Frank resuming his war and launches itself forward like a bullet from the Punisher's barrel.
The special deliberately eschews any ending: Little Sicily is a war zone; Ma Gnucci is still gunning for the Punisher; he is likely still wanted by police after killing corrupt officers. The special has given Frank a mission, a setting, a community, a location, an archenemy, and the understanding that any victory over criminals will leave survivors that will produce more enemies. ONE LAST KILL makes it clear that Frank's war is without end.
ONE LAST KILL is not a film or a tie-in to BORN AGAIN or BRAND NEW DAY. ONE LAST KILL is a repilot, a second beginning that demonstrates Bernthal's very specific and focused vision of the Punisher as a man engaged in an endless war. ONE LAST KILL lays the foundation for how a Punisher series would continue to function as an ongoing television show, provides Frank with a motive that is as streamlined as Bernthal's performance, and sets aside the unfathomable continuity of the Netflix years.
(Just my highly meta take on it all.)
